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AT THE RELTON ARMS 








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Copyright^ 1895, 

By Roberts Brothers. 




Hntbersttg Press. 

John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U. 


I. A. 


AT THE EELTON AEMS. 


CHAPTER I. 

It was towards the end of a crowded recep- 
tion in the musician’s studio. Most of the 
people who had come from a sense of social 
obligation, and they were chiefly the moth- 
ers of his fashionable pupils, had left when 
the musician began to play his own compo- 
sitions ; and those who remained behind, 
and occupied the position of the Greek 
chorus with regard to his remarks, were his 
own chosen disciples, who were of course 
privileged to stay much longer than ordin- 
ary acquaintances. The musician, perhaps, 
had no effectual means of suggesting their 
departure ; but neither was their homage, 
being very womanly and obvious, unpleas- 
ing to him ; and when the well-dressed 


8 AT THE KELTON ARMS. 

Philistines had driven away in their car- 
riages, he abandoned the attitude of the 
debonair host and took up that of the pro- 
phet instead, which at once gave a serious 
turn to the conversation. He then pro- 
pounded his own theories, or somebody 
else's, at great length, and the chorus as- 
sented with a gentle murmur of approba- 
tion whenever there was . a pause. Occa- 
sionally one of the elect would ask for some 
music, and the musician would single out a 
pupil whom he considered qualified to in- 
terpret what he had composed ; and in the 
applause which invariably followed, the 
performer would be entirely eclipsed by 
the greater importance of what she had 
performed. 

Is n’t it a beautiful thing ? Such 
depth,” said Mrs. Reginald Routh, moving 
away from the piano where she had just 
been singing the musician’s last song. It 
was an uncomfortable habit she had of al- 
ways anticipating what the other people 
would have said if she had only given them 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 9 

time to speak ; and she had acquired it 
from living many years with an unmusical 
though wealthy husband, who only ac- 
knowledged his wife’s musical talents by 
sending large checks annually to the mu- 
sician. On this occasion she caught the 
eye of some one who had just arrived, and 
repeated her remark emphatically ; for the 
new-comer was a stranger who had unscru- 
pulously interrupted the last verse of her 
song, and was now absorbed in prolonging 
the existence of a modicum of bitter tea, 
one sugar-plum, and a preserved cherry. 

‘^Is it?” she answered hastily, seeing 
she was expected to say something. I 
suppose it is quite good, of course. Who 
is it by ? I suppose you can’t say, though, 
without looking; and I have n’t really the 
least desire to know. Talking of music,” 
she continued blandly, chasing the sugar- 
plum round the saucer, I have really 
had a treat this afternoon at St. James s 
Hall. Of course you have often heard 
Sapolienski? Don’t ask me how to pro- 


10 AT THE RELTON ARMS. 

nounce him ; I think another of the horrors 
added to modern composers is the length of 
their names. But I ’m ashamed to say I 
have never heard him before ; I have been 
abroad, you see, and I am not a bit musical 
either. I enjoyed it much more than I 
expected though, and you should have seen 
the ovation he received at the end, ladies 
crowding on to the platform and throwing 
their rings at him ! Oh, no, I am clearly 
not musical. But still, as he is the great- 
est musician of the day. . . ^ 

Here Mrs. Keginald Kouth found her op- 
portunity, and used it. 

Oh, indeed ? I have never heard of a 
player of that name, but really there are so 
many third-rate ^ eskis ’ now that we can- 
not be expected to know them all. I dis- 
like all kinds of sentimental 'effusion, and 
society lions, especially when they are mu- 
sical ones, are singularly unpleasing to me. 
There can be no flattery where true genius 
exists, and if we were to reserve our praise 
for real hidden talent,” she paused as the 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 11 

musician came within hearing and repeated 
her last words in a louder tone, real hid- 
den talent, music would at last find her 
rightful place of honor among us. Do you 
not think so, Mr. Digby ? ” 

Mrs. Keginald maintained a superb air of 
possession over music by making it always 
of the feminine gender, just as she did over 
the musician by calling him by his first 
name. 

Mr. Digby Kaleigh, thus intercepted in 
his passage across the room, turned on his 
heel and ran his fingers through his hair as 
he launched out on his favorite theme with 
enthusiasm. For besides being an interest- 
ing musician with a studio in the West 
End, he had views on metaphysics and So- 
cialism as well, and although his warm 
discussions of these and other modern sub- 
jects conveyed little but confused notions 
to the minds of his feminine hearers, yet 
his enthusiasm only lent him a more potent 
charm in their eyes. 

Not yet, Mrs. Kouth, no, no, not yet,’’ 


12 AT THE RELTON ARMS. 

he exclaimed earnestly, ^‘we are not ready, 
not fit for it yet. Socialism has to come 
first ; the people must be taught the mean- 
ing of life and humanity before they can be 
made ready for music. Music is the end 
and aim of every intelligent Socialist. The 
people must suffer first, as we have all had 
to suffer, we who do understand and are 
waiting for the light which cannot shine 
because of the materialists who do not even 
feel the need of it. Life is a problem, but 
we at least are happiest who see that it is 
so, and seek for the solution with our — 
with our heart’s blood.” 

The end was not quite so eloquent as the 
beginning of his speech, but the musician 
had also caught the eye of the latest comer 
as she stirred the grounds of her tea me- 
chanically and looked across the room at 
him, and he became suddenly conscious that 
there was somebody in the room who was 
actually inclined to laugh at him. So he 
stumbled slightly over his last words, and 
blushed a little at his own emotion ; but 


AT THE EELTON AEMS. 


13 


the other ladies were glancing at one an- 
other with much sympathy as if to show 
that they thoroughly understood all he 
meant and felt, and they evidently expected 
some more to follow. So he ran his fingers 
through his hair again, and looked at 
Mrs. Reginald Routh, and tried to forget 
the gray-eyed girl in the warmth of his 
cause. 

It is not Parlimentary reform, it is not 
any revolution, or series of revolutions, 
that will bring Socialism. It is we our- 
selves who must give it birth after much 
pain and sorrow, even as a mother — ’’ 
here the exclusive nature of the audience 
struck him, and he paused abruptly, until 
he remembered that he was a prophet, and 
might use any questionable metaphor he 
pleased without impropriety — even as a 
mother brings forth the child who is to 
become her joy and her comfort. It is the 
spirit of altruism that has to be diffused 
among us, and when we have once realized 
that the ^ will to live ’ as Schopenhauer 


14 AT THE RELTON ARMS. 

puts it, is the one to be controlled, and that 
the finest of all things is to die, — that is, 
of course, to live, — to live for the good of 
the Commonwealth, then shall we be pre- 
pared for the enjoyment of perfect art, and 
then shall the musician, — that is, of course, 
the art of the musician, — be allowed to exist 
without such sordid considerations as bread 
and butter and a roof. I use art in its 
highest, its only real sense, as meaning 
music only ; such imitative branches as 
literature and painting will not then be 
practised. I — -I beg your pardon ? ” 
Please don’t stop,” urged the gray-eyed 
girl, who had painted certain hot sunsets 
and purple mists during her travels on the 
Continent, and had shown in her face what 
she thought of the musician’s . last words, 
I w;ould not interrupt for the world. I 
don’t know anything about Socialism, or 
any of the other things you mention except 
painting, which is evidently doomed. So 
pray go on, I find it most entertaining.” 

And a laugh, in which derision was 


AT THE EELTON AKMS. 15 

plainly discernible, rang out to bear testi- 
mony to her words. She evidently did 
not realize the serious nature of the assem- 
blage in which she found herself, and Mrs. 
Reginald acquired a distinct antipathy f oi- 
lier when she leaned back in her chair 
carelessly, and proceeded to argue with 
Digby as though he were any ordinary 
young man, with no ideas, and no studio, 
and no deep and hidden tragedy in his life 
which could be alluded to darkly whenever 
the topic of conversation required it. And 
no one in the room could forgive her when 
the musician threw himself on the chair at 
her side, and condescended to parry her 
objections as though he thoroughly enjoyed 
the attack she was daring to make upon 
his favorite principles. 

‘^Do you not see that the language of 
painting is limited ? ’’ he cried. It has told 
us all it had to tell; it is not adapted to 
modern needs and modern craving, though 
the impressionists have made a fine at- 
tempt, a noble attempt, to make it express 


16 AT THE RELTON ARMS. 

more than it can. Do you not see that 
while music is purely spiritual, purely intel- 
lectual, painting is a mere imitation of the 
common objects of nature ? ’’ 

Man and woman being among the com- 
mon objects ? ” murmured the girl. But he 
did not heed her tiresoraely obvious re- 
mark, and plunged onwards. 

Is not art finer, ten times finer than 
nature ? You cannot see below the surface, 
you painters who copy nature, poor igno- 
rant nature, who is only on the threshold of 
knowledge herself. You say you can paint 
a tree ; but when it is done, what is it ? 
A tree!” 

No, it is not only the tree,” objected 
the other, it is the picture in the artist’s 
mind that the tree makes. When you 
and I look at a tree we see two different 
things, — apparently ; and as I live in the 
country most of the year, I am thankful I 
am not a musician. Voila tout ! ” 

But even then ? You can put into 
your picture none of the workings of the 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 17 

human mind, none of the aspirations of the 
human soul. When you have a great hap- 
piness or a great sorrow, does it help you 
to paint your pictures? No, no, your 
painting is apart from your existence, your 
mind has no place there. In the future we 
shall have but one art, and that art will be 
music ! ” 

“ Oh, Mr. Raleigh ! ” laughed the girl, 
you are making a world for one kind of 
people. What will happen to the poor 
luckless ones like myself who are not musi- 
cal ? I suppose there will have to be some 
in your world ? 

Je n’en vois pas la necessity,” said the 
musician, relaxing into a laugh too ; but 
Mrs. Routh, who had never read Voltaire, 
thought it was quite time to interfere when 
she could not even understand what they 
were saying, and she dropped her parasol, 
Digby stooped to pick it up, and she asked 
him promptly to play something. 

The spell was broken, and the chorus 

round the room echoed the request. The 
2 


18 AT THE KELTON ARMS. 

musician smiled in a forced manner^ and 
said he would play the thirty-seven varia- 
tions of Beethoven. 

Oh, no, something of your own,” begged 
the chorus. 

Yes, please, Mr. Raleigh, something full 
of the workings of the human mind and the 
aspirations of the human soul,” said the 
girl, merrily ; and as the musician sat down 
and began to play, she again shocked every- 
body by walking round the room and ex- 
amining the photographs. 

How exquisite, how emotional ! ” cried 
the easily moved Mrs. Reginald when he 
had finished. 

Is he not bound to get on ? ” said the 
other upholders of altruism. But the mu- 
sician did not seem to hear them, for he 
crossed over to the girl by the bookshelves. 

Now tell me,” she said, hardly lower- 
ing her voice, is it possible to compose 
anything that would express the aspirations 
of Mrs. Reginald Routh’s soul ? That is 
she, is it not, the one in the black silk who 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 19 

glares at me and is so maternal to you? 
Oh, I shall never understand the language 
of music; I wonder if you find the lan- 
guage of painting as difficult, and if that is 
why you have acquired such an unflattering 
opinion of it ? ” 

May it not be because I have as yet 
seen none of your sketches ? ” he said gal- 
lantly ; but she shrugged her shoulders and 
turned away. 

What stacks of photographs you have. 
Cleverly arranged too, I see : pupils in 
evening dress from twenty to twenty-five 
on the piano ; pupils with long hair and 
pinafores on the mantelshelf with the pipe- 
racks ; mammas in velvet and fur behind 
the fern-pots. Ah, the workings of the 
musical mind are most subtle. Good-bye ; 
I suppose I shall see you down at the Manor 
on Saturday ? ” 

I hope to run down for the week end ; 
I have not seen my people for months. 
And perhaps I may have an opportunity of 
converting you yet ! Is your carriage 
here ? ” 


20 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 


Who is she ? ” asked some one, when 
the musician had followed her into the hall. 

Don’t ask me, dear,” said Mrs. Regi- 
nald, with her habitual smile, “ I am quite 
unacquainted with the person.” 

Poor Mr. Raleigh, I quite felt for him,” 
said another ; but how chivalrous he is ! 
No one would have suspected how much 
her impertinence was torturing his sensi- 
tive nature.” 

I should not call her impertinent my- 
self,” said Mrs. Reginald, charitably, I 
think it is merely want of breeding. Pro- 
vincial, I should say. Some friend of the 
family perhaps : I have heard — that is to 
say, Mr. Digby has often talked to me of 
his home in the country. Strange that so 
many of our greatest men should have come 
up from the provinces. Take — take Han- 
del, for instance, or even Charlotte Bronte.” 

What a pretty girl, Mr. Raleigh ; who 
is she?” asked the first speaker, when the 
musician returned, with rather a conscious 
look on his face. 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 


21 


Ah, yes, charming, is n’t she ? She is 
Lady Joan Relton, the Relton Court fam- 
J? know ; came into the title unex- 
pectedly through the death of a great-uncle. 
Not much wealth, I believe ; no doubt, all 
the money has been squandered by her 
worthless and immoral ancestors,”, he 
added, remembering his prophet’s mantle 
in time to justify his momentary interest in 
the aristocracy. Will you give us another 
song, Mrs. Routh ? ” 

And, the room having been cleared, as it 
were, of the heretical element, the atmos- 
phere of music once more settled down sol- 
idly on that studio in the West End. 


CHAPTER II. 


Squire Raleigh was a philanthropist. 
But philanthropy in town is a costly 
amusement, and Squire Raleigh had a 
large family, whose claims could not com- 
fortably be ignored in favor of charitable 
institutions, although a philanthropist with 
a love for mankind cannot be expected to 
do as much for his own children as an or- 
dinary domesticated egoist. Nevertheless, 
after the endowment of an orphan asylum, 
and the failure of a Liberal newspaper 
speculation, and the gift of a public park 
to the people had been followed by the re- 
duction of his income to one-third of its 
original value, the vigorous reformer yielded 
to the persuasions of his sons and his lawyers 
and retired to his country estate, with a 
knighthood, a troublesome liver, and a firm 


AT THE EELTON ARMS. 23 

resolve to get to the bottom of the land 
question. 

At Murville Manor, an old Georgian 
house standing near a quaint little village 
in one of the home counties, Sir Marcus 
Raleigh once more tried to forget the dis- 
agreeable facts of an income with decreas- 
ing resources and a family of increasing 
claims, and plunged into fresh philanthropic 
schemes, this time relating to small hold- 
ings, and the growth of potatoes for the 
million, and the advancement in general 
of the agricultural laborer. Such energy 
naturally brought the enthusiast into col- 
lision with his own farming tenants, who 
liked to preserve the monopoly of grumbling 
to themselves, and although not hesitating 
to complain of the difficulties of making 
their land pay, yet objected strongly to 
having small portions of it wrested from 
them and given to their own laborers in- 
stead, who throve upon them straightway. 
It likewise bred strained relations between 
the Squire and the old rector, who in his 


24 AT THE RELTON ARMS. 

own way of Sunday-schools, and coal clubs, 
and relief funds, was a philanthropist of an 
old world form, and could not understand 
why the traditional supporter of church 
charities should prefer to invent charities 
of his own and allow the church to fall into 
debt meanwhile. His family also, who had 
not inherited philanthropic tendencies, failed 
to appreciate the unselfishness of their father 
in this direction, and complained with the 
grossest individualism of the want of pocket 
money. They complained, too, of being 
forced to exchange a town life, where they 
could at least sink their father s personality 
in the oblivion of society, for a country one, 
where it was impossible to remain unknown 
for miles round, where philanthropy was 
cheap and therefore more rife than before, 
and where a large staff of men-servants 
was replaced by a so-called handy man. 
The handy man, by the way, in spite of 
advertising himself in the county paper 
as competent to look after ^^pony, cart, 
garden, boots, knives, fifteen shillings a 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 


25 


week, Sundays, and beer,” had as yet shown 
no decided talent in any of these particu- 
lars, except in the last-mentioned one. 

Among a mass of other inconsistencies, 
which almost likened him to a schoolboy 
who is having a romp through life instead 
of playing the game seriously, the Squire, 
while considering his children in the light 
of impedimenta, yet cherished a passionate 
affection for the least worthy of them all, 
for the one to whom nature had decreed 
that he should bequeath, with a liberality 
he had shown his children in no other re- 
spect, the largest share of his own failings. 
Jack Raleigh was handsome, fascinating, 
improvident to a degree, with no fixed code 
of morality and no definite powers of rea- 
soning, ruling himself and his actions en- 
tirely by a kind of blind instinct such as 
we find in healthy animals or in children. 
His love, like his antipathy, was of an ele- 
mentary character ; if he found himself in 
a complicated situation, which was not rare, 
he would merely choose the most pleasant 


26 AT THE RELTON ARMS. 

course open to him, without giving it a 
moment’s consideration, and would follov^ 
it gayly until another obstacle arose which 
would have to be treated in a similar 
manner. Whether he was the happier for 
feeling nothing deeply, belongs to those 
questions which are argued by thousands 
of lives every day without a conclusive 
answer being found to them. That his 
temperament was the sunnier for it and 
that his misdeeds were less harmful, is most 
certain ; and since the God whom he be- 
lieved in, if he believed in one at all, was 
a kind of inexhaustible Being who could 
offer him as many fresh opportunities as 
he had squandered already, and seemed to 
be the cause, in some indirect way that 
Jack never attempted to fathom, of occa- 
sional magnificent music in churches and 
cathedrals, his religion as well as his ex- 
cellent digestion saved him from the fits 
of depression that usually accompany the 
sanguine disposition. He had discovered 
before he was out of his teens that England 


AT THE RELTOK ARMS. 27 

was not the place for one so restless as he, 
and he had been sent out to more than one 
colony to try his luck,” as the Squire said, 
in a vague hope of shifting his uneasy 
responsibility for his son’s actions on to 
fortune. But fortune, although not phil- 
anthropic in her tendencies, and having no 
nobler vocation to distract her from her 
plain duty of looking after her prodigal 
sons, refused to help , him, and he inevi- 
tably returned home with more debts, more 
friends, more anecdotes, but no more sta-. 
bility than before. 

It was on a dull morning in July, at, 
breakfast time, that Jack caused his father 
for the hundredth time to recognize his 
existence in an unpleasant manner. It was 
an unfortunate time for his letter to arrive, 
for there was a mist that day, and as Sir 
Marcus was profoundly ignorant both of 
meteorology and the crops, and pretended 
to be an authority on both, he chose to feel 
injured because Helen assured him that it 
was not going to rain, and that his hay was 


28 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 


not going to be spoiled. To which the 
Squire, who never could endure the plain 
truths of his eldest daughter, replied testily 
that the mist did mean rain, that bis hay 
was going to be spoiled as it always was, and 
that he himself was a ruined man ; he then 
sat down at the now silent table and sighed 
in a dejected manner. Presently, finding 
that no one was looking at him, he roused 
himself partially, and made a hearty break- 
fast behind his newspaper ; and when the 
conversation around him was once more in 
full swing he condescended to look at his 
letters. He opened Jack’s first, as he always 
did. It was the old story, told in the boy’s 
usual careless manner : Canada had grown 
too small for him, he was feeling homesick, 
and was about to sail for England, and 
would be with his father almost as soon as 
his letter, to which effect he was his loving 
son Jack. 

It was not the first letter of the kind 
that the Squire had received from the same 
source, and he knew what this one meant : 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 


29 


Jack would be back again before the week 
was out, with an accumulation of debts 
and not a dollar in his pocket, Jack, with 
his sunny smile, and his nonchalance, and 
his utter unconsciousness of offence. Jack 
meant money, family meant money, and 
Sir Marcus was close upon overdrawing his 
banking account already, and had promised 
a large subscription only the day before to 
the building fund of the village reading- 
room. If there had been no stranger pres- 
ent lie would have relieved his feelings by 
a characteristic outburst; but Lady Joan sat 
opposite to him and saw as much as she 
wished to see without raising her eyes from 
her plate, and he felt instinctively that he 
might merely succeed in making himself 
ridiculous if he spoke before the opportu- 
nity occurred ; and, impetuous man as he 
was, something he could not define re- 
strained him from creating a situation just 
then which should not be dignified. So he 
read the letter over again, and he listened 
mechanically to the conversation of his 


30 AT THE RELTOIS^ ARMS. 

offending children, without heeding what 
they said. 

After all,” Digby was saying, with a 
gravity which the subject hardly merited, 
for in the heart of his own family, although 
he still remained the prophet, yet he re- 
frained from provoking the serious discus- 
sions which were .only fitting within the 
sacred walls of the studio, after all, it 
does not matter how bad a fellow is, if he 
is only artistically so, I mean if he will only 
be thorough over it.” 

It does not matter how wicked we all 
are, so long as we can see the humor of sin., 
To be able to laugh at ourselves is the great 
thing,” murmured Lady Joan. 

There is nothing so depressing,” con- 
tinued the musician, without heeding the 
interruption, ^^as the spectacle of a man 
who will not face his own wickedness — or 
even his own goodness. It is a sign of the 
age, this wretched spirit of compromise ; we 
don’t live in town because it is unhealthy, 
and the fogs are so bad — ” 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 31 

dear, that was not the reason,” 
Lady Raleigh murmured — also unheeded. 

— and we don’t live in the country 
because it is too far to come up to the con- 
certs ; so we live at Crouch End or Putney, 
where an exasperating local railway lies 
between us and St. James’s Hall, and where 
the ends of the fogs hang about for days. 
We haven’t the pluck to say yea or nay; 
we leave all our decisions to the gods, who 
throw them back upon us again, or to — 
to fate, who only plays with us at will ; we 
would do anything to shirk the respon- 
sibility of the ego. Look at Helen, now ; 
the bent of her character is towards religion, 
yet she hesitates to go into a convent. 
Therefore her religion does not make her 
picturesque.” 

- Digby ! How caii you argue at break- 
fast time ? And I think you might keep 
your horrid atheistical notions to yourself 
before the children,” cried Helen, crossly. 
She had not recovered from her passage of 
arms with the Squire. 


32 AT THE RELTON ARMS. 

Digby plodded on with his breakfast and 
his theory. 

^^We are all the same, as a family. 
Take the father : he would lay down his life 
for the working-man, or he thinks so ; and 
yet he is afraid to go in for Socialism, 
which offers the only solution to the labor 
question. It is an age of compromise ; we 
are all cowards.” 

Digby is so fond of taking his own 
particular failings and generalizing them,” 
said the still ruffled Helen to nobody in 
particular. 

People with decided opinions, pictur- 
esque people, as you call them, are people 
with fads; and I hate people with fads,” 
said Lady Joan, they are ten times more 
uninteresting than the weathercock sort of 
people who make compromises. Why 
should you always behave as if you went 
by clockwork? It is far too much trouble 
when, after all, nothing matters. And 
why do you want to be quarrelling with 
the age perpetually? It seems a nice com- 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 33 

fortable sort of age to me ; T suppose it 
has a different aspect for musical people.” 

Digby’s end of the table was always 
the most popular whenever he was at 
home, which was not often enough to 
spoil his reputation, — more popular at all 
events than the other end, where Lady 
Raleigh insisted on making the tea, and 
made it very badly, and wLere the Squire 
opened his. letters and found they were 
mostly bills. If his eldest son had not 
been monopolizing the conversation on 
this morning in particular, the efforts of 
Sir Marcus to make a sensation by sighing 
deeply and rustling the letter in his hand 
might have succeeded in attracting some 
notice ; but as it was, he was quite un- 
heeded, and his wife went on spilling the 
milk behind the urn, and filling up the 
teapot with water which had boiled half 
an hour ago, while the noisy chatter was 
carried on uninterruptedly round Digby 
and Lady Joan. 

Of all forms of self-indulgence, unintel- 

3 


34 AT THE RE ETON ARMS. 

ligent self-sacrifice is the most degrading. 
Somebody says that the time of the clever 
people is taken up in undoing the harm 
done by the good people.’^ 

By the stupid people/’ objected Helen 
brusquely. 

“ That is just the point/’ began Digby, 
vigorously; but his mother’s complaining 
voice broke in upon the conversation. 

“ What is to be done, Helen ? Have you 
heard, my dear ? Mrs. Bates says she can- 
not let me have more than three pounds 
of butter a week. Did you ever know 
anything more provoking ? Oh, the diffi- 
culty of getting dairy produce in the coun- 
try ! Why did we ever leave Cadogan 
Square?" 

Perhaps country life was more trying 
to Lady Raleigh than to any other member 
of her family ; for, with the inconsequence 
of woman, she could not forgive her hus- 
band for selling their London house, 
although herself the first instigator of the 
scheme. To remind him continually of 


AT THE KELTON ARMS. 


35 


the fact that the place did not agree with 
her, she refused to trust herself to the 
handy man’s whip, and never walked fur» 
ther than the garden gate, by which means 
she preserved her constitution admirably, 
and ruined her nervous system ; and in 
this unhealthy condition of mind she shut 
herself up in Murville Manor, where her 
sole occupations became the mismanage- 
ment of her household, and the perusal 
of the illustrated papers. 

Her last remark caught the Squire’s ear, 
and gave him the opportunity he wanted. 

Why did we leave Cadogan Square, 
Lettice ? ” he shouted, wheeling round upon 
her suddenly. I will tell you why, if you 
can’t see for yourself by merely looking 
down the table. Because I am a poor 
man, Lettice ; because I have a large family 
that would swallow up any income; be- 
cause it is money, money, all day long, 
until I feel I can’t give a shilling to a poor 
laboring man to — to improve his mind 
and — and his position, without feeling. 


36 


AT THE KELTON ARMS. 


without feeling extravagant, in short. ’’ — 
The Squire always found that his philan- 
thropic sentiments did not sound nearly so 
effective in his own home as when thun- 
dered forth from a rickety platform in the 
village schoolroom ; the family circle is at 
all times a great leveller, and his constant 
terror of the ridiculous brought him swiftly 
back to the present actual grievance : 
‘‘Do you ask me loJiy, when I receive a 
letter like this from the son I have loved 
and educated and denied myself for ? I will 
tell you why, if you like, Lettice. Because 
I am not a rnillionnaire, Lettice ; because I 
have four sons doing nothing but spend 
money ; because Jack, confound the fellow, 
is in England at the present moment, and 
may be here to-day — ” 

Lady Baleigh gave a little scream, and 
possessed herself of the offending letter. 
The children began to ask innumerable 
questions in hushed voices, the elder ones 
looked dejected, and Lady Joan sipped her 
coffee with an exaggerated look of uncon- 


AT THE EELTON ARMS. 


37 


cern on her face, and a twinkle in the gray- 
eyes which all the powers of dissimulation 
that she possessed could not quite conceal. 

^‘He does not say he is in debt/’ said 
Lady Raleigh, through a mist of joyful 
tears. 

Sir Marcus twisted his napkin into a 
tangle and threw it on the floor. 

Say ? ” he cried, striding towards the 
door ; don’t I know what he means, the 
rascal ? I tell you I ’ve done with him for 
once and for always ; he shall enter my 
house no more ; and if he comes here with 
his intolerable impudence, I shall show him 
the door. It is right that I should make an 
example of him, whatever it costs me to do 
it; and though he is my own son I will 
harden my heart and do it. Not a penny 
more shall he get out of me ; I wash my 
hands of him and his debts ", it is my. — my 
duty as a father to — to do it, in short, and 
you may tell him so when he comes, the 
young scapegrace ! ” 

And with a sense almost of relief at hav- 


38 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 


ing found a justifiable reason for avoiding 
this fresh trouble, and moreover a lurking 
suspicion that any such reason was wholly 
ineffectual to prevent Jack from coming 
home, Sir Marcus flung himself out of the 
room and banged the door. 

^^Jack ought to be ashamed of himself; 
how can he expect papa to do any more for 
him?” said the implacable Helen. There 
is a kind of religious woman who, although 
she is a woman and although she is reli- 
gious, is a slave to her own ideal of justice. 

‘‘ Helen, don't be unjust,” complained her 
mother, wiping her tears, and alive to half- 
a-dozen sensations at the same instant ; 
^nhe dear boy cannot help being fond of 
his home, so sweet and affectionate of him. 
Dear Lady Joan, you must pay no heed to 
what Sir Marcus said just now ; he does not 
mean all he says, you know, and he was 
just a little startled by the suddenness of 
dear Jack’s decision ; it is my husband’s 
way of hiding his real emotion. I’m sure 
I don’t know why he should make so much 


AT THE KELTON ARMS. 39 

fuss over a trifle when we have so many real 
troubles to bear. — Now, my dear Digby, 
you know I do not allow smoking in the 
dining-room ; how can you be so unkind as 
to add wilfully to all my worries? I shall 
have a headache for certain, now. — Tom, 
darling, open the window, and try to get 
the horrid smell out ; I feel distracted ! And 
has any one seen my key-basket ? ’’ 

When will Jack be here, I wonder ? ” 
observed Digby, holding the offending cigar- 
ette out of the window, and trying to hide 
by a supreme indifference his consciousness 
at that moment that a prophet is without 
honor in his own country. Lady Joan, from 
a studied attitude on the wide old window 
seat, was not in the least deceived by his man- 
ner, and laughed clearly and mockingly. 

Oh, the dear boy,” said Lady Ealeigh, 
in a restored and cheerful tone, to think 
that he may come at any moment, and 
there is no ale in the house. Helen, you 
must write at once, and, dear me ! we must 
watch for every footstep all day ; and there 


40 AT THE EELTON ARMS. 

are the sheets too, — where is Nurse ? Dear 
Lady Joan, you must forgive the emotions 
of a foolish old mother ; I assure you I am 
never flurried like this ; but even the best of 
housekeepers would be disturbed by such a 
sudden event. And he really must not have 
damp sheets ; he has slept in a blanket for 
two years, he tells me, and damp sheets are 
so dangerous ; but he shall have them to- 
night, bless him ! Oh, children ! look, look ! 
who is that coming along behind the hedge ? 
Move out of the way, Digby, and don't 
make so much noise, everybody. Why can’t 
I make myself heard in my own house ? Is 
it — can it — oh, tell me who it is ! ” 

A moment’s breathless silence was fol- 
lowed by a shout of laughter as the unmis- 
takable corduroys of the handy man came 
into view. 

George, George, come here,” exclaimed 
Lady Raleigh ; you must not leave this spot 
all day long, as Master Jack may be here at 
any minute. Do you understand ? So go 
into the field at once and get the pony in. 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 41 

and you had better have him harnessed, all 
ready to go to the station. And will you 
go now to the post-office and see if there is 
a telegram ? You might wait there on the 
chance, or at all events be in readiness. 
But don’t go beyond the grounds, whatever 
you do. Dear boy, how I love him ! ” 

And perfectly happy in the certainty of 
everything being properly arranged now 
that she had given her own orders. Lady 
Raleigh swept away to arrange a royal 
feast for the prodigal. 

Please, Mr. Digby, be I to stop here 
till Master Jack comes?” asked the be- 
wildered George. 

Digby laughed quietly, and re-lighted his 
cigarette. 

If you take my advice, George, do your 
w’ork as usual, and doffit bother about Mas- 
ter « Jack. When he does come he won’t 
dream of sending a telegram to say so. 
That is not Jack’s way.” 

Will he walk from the station ? ” asked 
Lady Joan, carelessly. The others had all 


42 


AT THE HELTON ARMS. 


strolled away ; and, in tlie presence of the 
maid who was clearing away the breakfast 
things, she felt it incumbent upon her to 
say something commonplace. Digby, who, 
being a man, felt no such necessity, looked 
at the pretty little foot that was swinging 
backwards and forwards, and wondered why 
she wanted to know. 

Not he ! That is not Jack^s way either. 
He will drive up in a coach and four when 
we have given up expecting him, and want 
to know why we did not all go down to 
the station in a body to meet him. Then 
there will be a hubbub, and Jack will be 
king of the house again.” 

And you will be dethroned ?’^ she asked 
maliciously. 

He heard the question, and did not notice 
the malice in it. 

Only until he begins to say why he has 
come, and the rain has spoiled the hay,” he 
said, with another laugh. 


CHAPTER III. 


With the peculiar good fortune which has 
attended the oracle of all ages, Digby’s pre- 
diction came true, and Jack did come home 
that evening when every one had stopped 
talking about him, and there was a uni- 
versal tendency among his brothers and 
sisters to avoid the topic of his arrival. 
It was tea-time, and the Squire was stand- 
ing in the middle of the drawing-room 
and allowing himself to be coaxed on to 
his favorite subjects by certain methods 
known only to his children ; though Lady 
Joan, with her accustomed shrewdness, and 
partly from a desire to fall into the spirit 
of her surroundings, however dull they 
might be, also lent her aid in drawing 
him out, and Sir Marcus became a willing 
and unconscious victim. 


44 AT THE RELTON ARMS. 

Interested in duck-breeding, did you 
say?” he exclaimed eagerly; “then you 
shall see something you can't see in Pont 
Street or any of your swell West End 
places," forgetting for the moment his enyy 
of Lady Joan’s charming house in town. 
“You shall come over one of our famous 
duckeries, and see what you 've been eat- 
ing with green peas all the season, and 
learn how we breed ducks in Murville. It 
is n’t every one who gets the opportunity 
of coming to the very centre of the most 
important village industry in the home 
counties, and it is quite time you saw hovr 
the laboring man is kept from starvation 
by a little help and a little encouragement. 
Why, let me tell you, though I am a modest 
man, God knows, and it is not I who should 
say it, that if it had not been for my letters 
to the papers, the duck interest wmuld have 
completely died out in Murville long ago. 
And where would the working-man have 
been then ? Do you know, my dear young 
lady, that I, that is, Murville, or rather, I 


AT THE EELTON ARMS. 45 

should say, my letter to the county paper 
has been quoted in the ^ Daily Liberal ’ ? 
There ’s fame for you ! You did n’t know 
you had come to such a world-renowned 
place, eh ? Ah, we are not so hidden in 
Murville, after all ; that is, the — the cause 
of the elevation of the laborer has its 
opportunities even in a small village like 
this/’ 

^^Even a duck has its portion in the 
scheme of Providence,” murmured Ladj^ 
Joan into her tea-cup ; I wish I could find 
out all these wonderful things for myself, 
they are so improving. For instance, I 
shall never mind paying a guinea a couple 
in February, now that I know I shall be 
doing a great national good by buying 
them.” 

You have got hold of quite the wrong 
idea,” interrupted Digby, ^‘a most anti- 
socialistic idea, of which I could not believe 
even you to be capable. As if the luxury 
of the rich could be of the least avail — ” 

A jaded expression crept over the visage 


46 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 


of Helen at this point, and his younger 
brothers irreverently urging him to play 
lightly, as they had heard that old wheeze 
before,” the derided prophet merely re- 
gretted the absence of bears, and smiled 
sadly. His father gladly filled up the 
breach. 

Eh, what ? Socialism, did you say ? 
Of course it is Socialism in its noblest form, 
when — when we get a notice in the ‘ Daily 
Liberal,’ and without paying for it too ! It 
was none of your cooked-up jobs, carried 
through with bribery and corruption, let 
me tell you, it was all fair and above 
board ; Editor ’s a personal friend of mine, 
don’t you see, and he would n t have quoted 
from my letter if he had n’t thoroughly ap- 
preciated it. You can’t get over facts with 
any amount of Socialism ; give me facts, 
that ’s what I always say,” concluded Sir 
Marcus, happily innocent that all his life 
his one aim had been to avoid facts and the 
unpleasant truths they had forced upon 
him. 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 47 

I can hear wheels,” said Lady Raleigh, 
suddenly. As she had made the same re- 
mark at intervals during the day, no one 
paid her any particular attention except 
Helen, who put out a protecting hand to 
the tea-table, as if she anticipated a rush. 
This time, however, there was undoubtedly 
a carriage coming up the drive ; and Lady 
Raleigh rose to her feet unsteadily, and be- 
came melodramatic. 

I can feel it is my boy,” she said, wind- 
ing her shawl tightly round her ; come to 
him, Marcus, come to our long-lost child.” 

Don’t make a fool of yourself,” growled 
Sir Marcus, bluntly ; he had suddenly re- 
signed his position in the middle of the 
room, and was sitting uncomfortably on the 
edge of the sofa instead ; he ’s only been 
away two years, and there ’s no more chance 
of his being lost than there is of your going 
a five-mile walk.” 

He f6lt he had fired a double shot by his 
remark; but there came a yell from the 
children on the doorstep, and his wife swept 


48 


AT THE RELTOT^ ARMS. 


out of the room with theatrical movements, 
and Sir Marcus felt more uncomfortable 
than before. 

Leave him to me, children ; let me have 
my boy’s first kiss,” cried Lady Raleigh, in 
the hall. 

^^Just look,” said the practical Helen, 
from the window : he has hired Bunce’s 
best trap, and we have n’t paid his bill for 
two quarters.” 

Lady Joan sat, and turned over the leaves 
of a magazine with her eyes discreetly 
lowered, and wished that the means of 
escape were not so completely cut off, and 
that she could get into the garden. Family 
jars were intensely amusing to her critical 
nature ; but after a whole day of them she 
felt that she could reasonably dispense with 
any more just now, and, from the Squire’s 
attitude, another storm was evidently 
brewing. 

Had n’t you better come out, sir ? ” 
suggested Digby. 

“ No, sir, I will not come out,” answered 


AT THE BELTON ARMS. 49 

Sir Marcus, with a show of determination. 

Have I not already told you that I have 
done with the rascal forever? I meant 
what I said, sir, and I will not see him nor 
speak to him ; he — he can go to some 'one 
else to pay his debts ! ’’ 

And, unconscious that he had put more 
feeling into the end of his speech than into 
anything else he had said, the Squire looked 
at his son and his daughter as if vaguely 
imploring them to support him in the step 
he had taken. In his most impetuous 
actions Sir Marcus always looked for a sup- 
porter. Yet, much as Digby admitted the 
justice of his father’s anger, and much as 
Helen might censure the prodigal herself, 
there was too much of the esprit de corps 
in them that ran through the blood of all 
the Raleighs and made them a formidable 
enemy to the outsider, to allow them to 
acquiesce in the Squire’s resentment and 
he shifted his ground a little and tried 
another stratagem. 

Don’t you see the trouble and the 

4 


50 AT THE RELTON ARMS. 

misery that is coming upon me through the 
extravagance of this young scamp ? How 
is it you are so short-sighted, so dense 
about it ? I tell you he is ruining me, this 
Jack you are all so fond of ; and in ruining 
me he is taking the bread out of your own 
mouths, and out of the mouths of your 
brothers and sisters. Hey ? Do you see 
now ? ” 

And finding that mercenary argument 
did not produce the effect he wanted. Sir 
Marcus fled from the sound of voices com- 
ing dangerously near, and beat a sheepish 
retreat into his library on the opposite side 
of the hall. 

It is curious,” said Digby, in his oratori- 
cal way, how the father can forgive any- 
thing but want of solid success. He does n’t 
care a hang that Jack has been the most 
popular fellow in the colony, but if he had 
made his pile and had something to show 
for his popularity, then he would proclaim 
it on the housetops. What a curious age 
it is, and how we love to judge by results 1 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 51 

By the way, Jack will have a warm time if 
the father keeps it up, won’t he ? ” 

Even the prophet has to drop into the 
colloquial sometimes. 

Good thing too, it ’s what he wants,” 
said the inconsistent Helen ; and they both 
glanced at the expressionless face of Lady 
Joan as she scanned the article on Chi- 
nese architecture,” and they left her to go 
and join the throng in the porch. 

In the library on the other side of the 
hall stood Sir Marcus, his back to the door 
and his feet set very square on the hearth- 
rug, trying to drown the noise of welcome 
in the porch by rustling the newspaper in 
his hands loudly, while he kept his eyes 
obstinately fixed on the Premier’s speech 
on .fruit-growing for the million. 

Capital speech, capital speech,” he said 
out loud, beginning it vaguely for the third 
time ; what I have always said myself in 
fact, but I never could get anybody to listen 
tome. Why — why the devil are they 
making such a row in the garden ? ” — as 


52 


AT THE KELTON ARMS. 


the window became darkened by the pass- 
ing of many figures — coming into the 
hall, are they ? Let them come into the 
hall by all means, I can’t stop them, it ’s 
no longer my own house, I suppose ; but 
they sha’n’t come in here anyhow ; I hope I 
have a remnant of authority left — and — 
eh, what ? is that the beggar laughing ? 
bless him! — that is, confound his impu- 
dence 1 what right has he to laugh when I 
don’t mean to forgive him? I — I ’ve been 
a weak fool all my life, but I ’m not going 
to give in this time ; it — it ’s a duty I owe 
to the younger ones to make an example of 
him, whatever it costs me to do it ; not 
that it costs me anything, of course, not 
anything at all, of course ; he — he has 
forfeited my love, the — the rascal, and I 
give in this time. Why — why the 
devil don’t they stop his laughing when I 
mean to cast him off ? Pack of women and 
children, with no sense of the responsibili- 
ties of life ! — ” the columns began to van- 
ish into mist, and the hall seemed filled 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 


53 


with one shout of laughte^ ; the Squire 
gasped and recovered himself — It ’s my 
duty as a father to withhold my forgive- 
ness ; what else is a poor man to do w^hen 
he has such an enormous family ? A moun- 
tain of debts at his back, I ’ll be bound, and 
he thinks he is going to get round me to 
pay them all — as if I would n’t help him 
if I could, bless his — hang his improvi- 
dence ! but when there are eleven of them 
— such absurdity on the part of Lettice, 
always told her it was an unnecessary 
thing to have such a tribe of them ; but 
there ! no one ever has listened to me, 
and now they must bear the consequences 
among them. Wh — what? who’s that 
at the door ? There ’s no one in here, I 
tell you, the — the room ’s empty, and I 
don’t mean to see you — I’m not going to 
be made a fool of when I ’ve kept it up all 
day — why does n’t he go away, eh ? ” 

The Squire’s voice had sunk into a whis- 
per, and the Daily Liberal” shook like a 
leaf in the breeze. 


54 AT THE RELTON ARMS. 

And the dear old guv, where is he ? 
Why does n^t he come out as he always 
does? Hasn’t any one told him I am 
here ? ” 

I tell you this is my room ; it is n’t 
much that belongs to me, except five sons 
doing nothing, and six unmarried daugh- 
ters, but — but this room is my property, 
and I won’t have any one in, I tell you — 
what a fool I was not to lock the door — 
eh, what ? who ’s that, eh ? Damn the 
looking-glass ! ” 

There was a mirror over the fireplace, 
and the fireplace was opposite the door. 
It was too much for Sir Marcus ; if the boy 
had shown the least sign of shame, of ner- 
vousness at meeting him, it would have 
been easier to keep up a semblance of an- 
ger ; but, as usual. Jack’s bluntness of vision 
saved him where finer instincts would have 
been his ruin. 

Hullo, father, here I am ! All right, 
father ? I say, is n’t it awfully jolly to be 
together again, eh, father ? ” 


AT THE RELTOH ARMS. 55 

The premier’s speech on fruit-growing for 
the million fluttered down into the coal 
scuttle ; and the Squire wiped his specta- 
cles violently, and gave in to the fascina- 
tion of the single man who never worked. 
And when Digby strolled in ten minutes 
later, he found the prodigal Ailing his 
father’s pipe with Canadian tobacco, and 
telling him American anecdotes, while the 
little room resounded with their laughter. 

Come in, Digby, and listen to this fel- 
low,” said Sir Marcus, jovially ; did you 
ever know such a fellow as Jack? It’s a 
pity you don’t try America, Digby, it would 
do you a world of good, man ! ” 

Digby accepted the situation and his evic- 
tion with a laugh, not only because, as he 
had said to Lady Joan, he knew he would be 
received back into favor again on the mor- 
row when the fascination of the prodigal 
would have exhausted itself for the time, 
but also from a lurking hope that he would 
at last have some chance of talking to their 
fair guest, whom the Squire had as yet en- 


56 AT THE RELTON ARMS. 

tirely monopolized, in the way he usually 
monopolized any stranger who would lend 
a willing and fresh ear to his hobbies. But 
the musician did not get his chance that 
evening, though he tried very hard for it. 
Jack’s return proved but a doubtful assist- 
ance to him : to begin with, it caused an 
alteration in the dinner-table, by which he 
found himself out of the range of her con- 
versation ; it also made the conversation in 
the drawing-room afterwards more hoplessly 
general than ever, for they all sat round in 
a circle and listened to the American anec- 
dotes, and when the American anecdotes 
flagged for a moment Digby had to go to 
the piano and play the returned wanderer s 
favorite airs, while the hero himself took 
the opportunity of opening a desperate flir- 
tation with Lady Joan under cover of the 
crashing chords of his eldest brother. 

The musician was full thirty years old, 
and had been in love almost as many times 
as he had photos in his West End studio ; like 
his father, it was only the trifling circum- 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 57 

stances of life, or its visions, that seemed 
to him to be worthy of serious consideration, 
and like his father he had retained his boy- 
ish temperament past the age when such a 
temperament is sufficient for the demands 
of circumstance. From the first his con- 
nection with Lady Joan had been unusual. 
She had not begun by fascinating him, and 
he had not begun by giving her singing- 
lessons. She was one of the few people of 
his acquaintance who knew of that secret 
marriage of his which had left him a wid- 
ower three years ago, with a baby son whom 
Sir Marcus would not acknowledge, and 
who did not regard it either as a boyish 
entanglement from which his wife’s death 
had luckily released him, or as a reason for 
abstaining from future marriage altogether. 
Not that she had any definite views on the 
subject of boyish entanglements or second 
marriages, for Lady Joan never had definite 
views on anything, they were too much 
-trouble to defend, and she would not have 
taken up any position which would not lend 


58 


AT THE HELTON ARMS. 


itself to modification on occasion ; but she 
was unconventional, and she knew it, and 
in spite of her boast that she was a woman 
of the world, there was enough of the 
school-girl in her to give her an exquisite 
delight in shocking other people who were 
not unconventional. So hers was the only 
hand that was held out to Digby when he 
came to Relton after his wife’s death, in 
search of a home for his child ; and it was 
she who braved the many-tongued slander 
of an idle country town, and helped him to 
find what he wanted in the motherly land- 
lady of the Relton Arms,” with whom he 
could leave the boy in safety. The arrange- 
ment necessarily brought him constantly to 
Relton, when he was naturally prompted 
by gratitude and courtesy to leave his card 
at the Hall ; but it was some time before 
she began to have any real interest for him. 
It was true that she was a beautiful woman, 
but her beauty and her wit were of a subtle 
kind, unlike the obvious and doll-like charms 
that usually attracted him in women ; she 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 59 

showed him that she found him interesting, 
but she did not adore him like his other 
lady friends, and she disputed his dicta, 
and she did not understand his music. 
After a time these very differences drew 
them together, and they passed into the 
desperately dangerous stage of fidendship, 
in which the man had to confess to himself 
that he was again in love, and the woman 
had to ask herself if he meant anything, 
and whether she was to continue to be nat- 
ural and pleasant to him, or whether the 
time had come for her in the eyes of society 
to avoid him and pretend she did not care 
for him. Lady Joan, hating the laws of 
society, and dreading still more the chain 
of another man’s will, broke the connection 
at this point and went abroad for a year, 
and was away long enough for Digby to 
fall in and out of another hot love affair, 
and returned on the day of his reception in 
the studio to find him rather more interest- 
ing than before, and herself made weaker 
in her resolution by a year’s sojourn with 
a lady companion. Digby on his part was 


60 AT THE KELTON ARMS. 

persuading himself that her return to Eng- 
land had caused the revival of his old love, 
and that this attachment which had begun 
so coldly and forced itself into his heart by 
the most estimable instincts of gratitude 
and friendship, was superior to all the other 
attachments of his life, which had begun 
with infatuation and ended with indiffer- 
ence, and was therefore to be cherished as 
the only real feeling he had ever had for 
any woman. 

I ’m not the sort of man to be a bach- 
elor,” he said to himself earnestly, some- 
where about midnight that evening, as he 
leaned out of his bedroom window and 
smoked a cigarette meditatively. Some 
fellows ought never to marry ; I told Dick 
Stephens so when he got engaged, and he 
was separated from his wife within a year 
of their marriage. But I am not like Dick 
Stephens. I am really a most domesticated 
sort of man, and it is time I settled down. 
I am tired of being a Bohemian ; every 
wretched little pygmy who writes ballads 
and lets his hair grow and does n’t wash, is 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 61 

a Bohemian. And there is the boy, too ; he 
ought to have a mother of course, poor lit- 
tle chap : we both want a woman about us, 
don’t we. Sonny ? Yes, there is no doubt 
that it is my duty to Sonny to marry very 
soon.” 

In the room above, among the cushions 
on the sofa, lay Lady Joan with her hair 
down and a fan in her hand, opposite a full- 
length mirror ; in her most secret moments 
Lady Joan liked to assure herself that she 
played the part picturesquely. 

I like him. He is fresh, and original, 
and amusing. He does n’t bore me, and I 
can flirt with him — safely. He has no 
theories about things, and he does not want 
to upset creation, and he does n’t take life 
so desperately seriously. It is such a bless- 
ing to meet some one who is content with 
the age as it is — bah ! what a smell of 
tobacco smoke ! ” 

And she rose, shut the window with a 
bang, and went to bed, where she slept 
soundly till the morning. 

It is curious,” murmured the musician, 


62 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 


lighting another cigarette, how Fate seems 
to have propelled her towards me at every 
crisis of my life ; just after Mary died, for 
instance, and again before I met Norah ! — 
poor little Norah ! and then again the other 
day, when I really had made up my mind 
to go to Africa, and she came back from 
the Continent in time to prevent me. And 
now — ah, I believe I could write that song 
now.” 

And he went to the writing-table and 
tried to set some impassioned words of 
Swinburne to music ; but although the sit- 
uation demanded that he should have been 
specially inspired, he found himself inca- 
pable of writing a note, and had to give 
up the task in despair. 

My brain is overwrought ; I am not 
going to sleep to-night,” he said, and put 
the bromide by his bedside. 

After that he also shut the window and 
went to bed, where he likewise slept 
soundly till the morning. 


CHAPTER IV. 


The ^^Relton Arms ’’ had the reputation of 
being the most respectable inn in the little 
country town of Relton. It had no parti- 
cular right to this title, being smaller and 
more shabby than the Red Lion ” down the 
street, which was a modern innovation run 
by a speculator from the neighboring mar- 
ket-town, and promised particular advan- 
tages to cyclists which they never quite 
seemed to reap ; but it had outlived gener- 
ations of Reltons up at the old Court, and 
it bore their family escutcheon on its sign- 
board, and all the club dinners were held in 
its oak-panelled parlor ; and the frequent 
presence of the rector on occasions when 
alcohol was banished from the table had 
naturally helped it to keep up its reputa- 
tion. The fallacy was maintained equally 


64 AT THE RELTON ARMS. 

strangely by the silence of its landlord, who 
only grew more taciturn as he grew more 
intoxicated, while the people who were fond 
of talking, notably his wife, made capital 
out of his silence and applauded him for it, 
so that he too became respectable in the 
eyes of Eelton. And never having been 
known to contradict any one in his life, 
respectable he accordingly consented to 
remain. 

It was on a sultry, still afternoon to- 
wards the end of the summer that Eoger 
Brill, the comely rat-catcher of the town, 
raised the latch of the Eelton Arms 
about tea-time. 

Mornin’, missus,’’ said he. 

And I ’m sure it ’s mornin’ to you. 
Muster Brill, notwithstandin’ it ’s beino- 
arternoon by time o’ sun, which be a foolish 
difference to make among old acquaintance ; 
but there, there ’s a deal too much talkin’ 
about trifles in my thin kin’. And be you 
ready for a cup of tea, lad, or be it the 
usual you ’ll be wantin’ ? ” 


AT THE KELT ON ARMS. 


65 


Without waiting for the reply, which 
had been the same, like the question, for 
the last fifteen years, the hustling landlady 
hastened forward with a chair and sent her 
obedient husband for the beer. One of the 
most remarkable phases of a monotonous 
incident is the way in which some people 
contrive to give it the appearance of nov- 
elty. Mrs. Haxtell belonged to such a 
class, and it did not in the least disturb her 
method that her husband had usually filled 
the pewter pot before she had finished in- 
viting her customer to have it. But old 
Peter was a man of deeds, not words, and 
he chose for his part to make the transac- 
tion a purely business one, though he al- 
lowed his wife to hide it with a veneer 
of hospitality if she would. And this 
she generally did in the most feminine 
and transparent manner possible, until 
the time for payment came, when she 
would meekly retire under cover of her 
sex, and leave her husband to battle with 
the creditor. 


5 


66 AT THE RELTON ARMS. 

“ Good sport to-day, lad ? ’’ asked Peter 
presently. 

Aye, for sure,” answered Koger ; and 
then, glancing professionally at the row of 
dead rats that hung from his waist, he 
added slowly, more ways nor one.” 

Eh,” said Peter, with a slight access of 
emphasis. 

They all knew something more was com- 
ing, and Mrs. Haxteirs knowledge of the 
rat-catcher’s temperament sufficed to keep 
her breathlessly silent in view of coaxing 
him to tell his news ; though, with the 
jealousy of the reformed thief who hates 
to see his brother continuing to thieve, she 
glanced imploringly at her husband and 
daughter, 'who had no intention of speak- 
ing, as if to silence them likewise. 

“ Lady Relton’s Dick came down my 
way last night,” began Roger, deliberately 
filling his pipe. 

So far his news came within the ken of 
his audience, and they were quick to main- 
tain a share in it. 


AT THE KELTON ARMS. 67 

I saw him myself, I did,” began Lily 
Eliza ; but her mother promptly took up 
the tale. 

Lady Helton’s Dick ? Eh, but he come 
along nigh after sunset, he did, and he says 
to my man, he says, ‘ Seen Muster Brill ? ’ 
he says. And my man told him, he did, 
as ye worn’t long gone home, not to call 
it short neither, nor yet very long ; least- 
ways ye were gone along home, he said, 
did n’t ye, Pete ? Speak up, man, and say 
what ye know, and doan’t sit starin’ as 
though heavin and earth wornt big enough 
for your eyes to look into.” 

Woman,” said Peter, with unusual ef- 
fort, heaven and earth bain’t big enough 
for your tongue to clapper in, nor yet they 
would n’t be if t’ other place was joined on 
too.” 

Here Roger struck in afresh. 

Lady Helton’s Dick said the rats in the 
stable worn’t worth their keep. Lady 
Helton told him she ’d pay the corn for the 
horses, but the rats would have to go else- 


68 AT THE RELTON ARMS. 

where if they wanted good grain, as she 
did n’t intend for ’em to have hers. I said 
I ’d go to-morrow, being promised to Farmer 
Wadsden’s ricks to-day ; but Dick, he says 
the world has to stop a turnin’ round for 
my lady, he says, and she were in a tak- 
ing along of them rats, so to-day I took the 
pup along and I went up to the Court.” 

Ah,” gasped the landlady ; she had 
not meant to interrupt, but the approach 
of the pith of the story was too much for 
her, and with the desperate economy of 
the schoolboy, who leaves the biggest plum 
to the last, she again diverted the channel 
of conversation. 

Lady Relton’s Dick fetched a gentle- 
man from the station this mornin’, and he 
took him back again an hour past. I 
knows he did, seeing as I was washing the 
precious baby’s face, or was I hanging out 
Mrs. Walker’s wash? when the dog-cart 
come by. Was it the gentleman as ye 
saw up at the Court, Muster Brill?” 

Few sights are more melancholy than 


AT THE RELTOH ARMS. 69 

that of a man who has been robbed of his 
story by another; and good-natured Roger 
Brill pushed back his chair at this second 
interruption, and rose to his feet with some- 
thing like offended dignity. 

If ye want to have the talkin’ to your- 
self, missus, I be going to clear out. Cause 
why ? It bain’t reasonable to tell a body 
somethin’ fresh when the body have heard 
it afore, and I ain’t the man to spoil t’ other 
body’s tale, so good arternoon to ye.” 

But here Peter became peacemaker. 

Sit ye down, lad, and doan’t heed her 
clapperin’ tongue. I doan’t, and it’s clip- 
per-clappered at me this twenty year.” 

With an effort of generosity the injured 
Roger recognized a grievance greater than 
his own, and by drinking the remainder of 
his beer standing he considered he had com- 
promised his dignity sufficiently to resume 
his seat and his story. 

Lord, what rats they was ! ” he ex- 
claimed, his eye kindling at the recollection. 

I never could have thought so well of ray 


70 AT THE RELTON ARMS. 

lady as that she 'd leave 'em to get to that 
pitch before calling me in. Why^ Peter^ 
man, if she’d called me in only a month 
ago she’d have spoilt the sport suinmat 1 
but here they was, eaten to bustin’ witli 
corn, and no thought of the morrow, as the 
Holy Scripture says. Eh, but that was a 
mornin’, that was; well, I reckon I’d laid 
out some dozen or more in the stable yard, 
when up comes Lady Belton and Mr. Jack.” 
He paused to watch the effect of his supe- 
rior knowledge on his hearers, chose to 
ignore the landlady’s triumphant whisper, 
^‘That’s him,” and sighed deeply. 
doan’t know no more than the dead what 
business it was of his to come hangin’ round 
my lady, what ’s all unprotected and alone 
like, bless her ! ” 

Nay, indeed,” echoed his hearers feel- 
ingly. 

‘•More partickler,” continued Roger, 
warmly, and striking his fist on the wooden 
table till the tea-cups rattled, “more par- 
tickler as Mr. Jack be Mr. Raleigh’s own 


AT THE EELTON ARMS. 


71 


brother, and my lady belongs to Mr. Raleigh 
if ever she belonged to anybody; and no 
one can’t deny as it ’s been my intention to 
put ^eni together this four year come harvest 
time. No one can’t deny it, no one.” 

True, lad, true,” grunted Peter sympa- 
thetically, while his wife cunningly seized 
the opportunity to interrupt again by ap- 
pearing to enter warmly into the rat- 
catcher’s disturbed feelings. 

And to think of his precious baby, ” 
sniffed Mrs. Plaxtell, pouring herself out 
another cup of tea ; to think of the dear 
lamb, with no mother and not much father 
to speak of, passing of his innocent child- 
hood without the woman’s care his father 
ought to give him. I ’ve no patience with 
such neglect, though I ’m sure I hope I ’ve 
done my best by the child, as I thought to 
myself only this mornin’ when I saw him 
stuffin’ his precious fat cheeks with green 
plums. It ain’t every one would let a child 
do that ! ” 

Lily Eliza became restive at this point. 


72 


AT THE KELTON ARMS. 


Tell about Mr. Jack, Muster Brill/’ she 
urged timidly. 

Daughter/’ said old Peter, sternly, it 
ain’t the part of a welhmeanin’. God-fearin’ 
lass to ask such a question, and if you 
worn’t your mother’s own daughter you 
would n’t have such sinful desires to ask 
’em.” 

In her anxiety to hear the rest of the 
story, the landlady allowed this backhanded 
attack on her morals to pass unnoticed, and 
Roger began afresh. Well, up they comes 
together, talkin’ and laughin’ quite friendly 
like, and my lady says to him, she says, 
^ Here ’s the rats you said I was to have 
killed,’ she says, ^and isn’t it a dear little 
dog?’ she says. So I says to her, ^ Aye, 
it be a good pup ; it ’s killed fourteen since 
breakfast,’ and I seemed to offend her like, 
for up she gets from where she ’d been pat- 
ting him, and she looks at Mr. Jack all in 
a blaze, and she says all angry like, ^ That ’s 
what you call sport, is it ? ’ she says. ‘ Mr. 
Digby would n’t call it sport,’ she says.” 


^ AT THE RELTON ARMS. 73 

No more he would n’t/’ said both the 
women simultaneously. 

That ’s true enough,” said Roger, slowly, 
but Lady Relton, she bain’t the smirking 
soft kind o’ woman what likes to spare the 
rat and spoil the corn, and I can’t rightly 
make out what ’s come over her to-day. 
She did n’t seem herself to-day, not anyhow, 
and she seemed to take a pleasure in quar- 
relin’ over everything Mr. Jack said, and 
then she laughed of him, she did. It worn’t 
like my lady, it worn’t, to talk soft stuff 
about killin’ rats ; that be more like t’ other 
one what come after Mr. Raleigh last spring- 
time, the one what had saucer eyes, and 
pretended to be fond of the child, with her 
nasty dingin’, pretendin’ ways.” 

The last words were said with biting con- 
tempt, and the women sat silent and sipped 
their tea approvingly. But old Peter had 
different views concerning the other one ” 
alluded to, and he again made the effort to 
interrupt. 

Eh, lad, but you be proper hard upon 


74 


AT THE EELTON ARMS. 


poor Miss Norah, proper hard you be, for 
sure. I would n’t be saying as ye have n’t 
your reasons for it, but she seemed a quiet 
sort of maiden enough, what did n’t mean 
no harm to speak of, and what’s suffered 
enough for her foolishness, I ’ll be bound.” 

‘‘1 hope she has, I hope she has,” ex- 
claimed Roger, vehemently. Those as 
comes with their sneaking ways tryin’ for 
to corrupt honest folk deserves to suffer for 
it. No one doan’t know why she did n’t 
come back when Mr. Raleigh sent that let- 
ter after her, and no one doan’t know why 
she did n’t even answer it ; but you take 
my word for it, it was Providence as inter- 
posed and would n’t have nothink to do 
with her, and it ’s Providence as opens the 
way now to Mr. Raleigh if he ’d only see it, 
and not want Providence to come down 
from heaven and poke him into it, so to 
speak. Who be that coming across the 
street ? ” 

Why, that be Mr. Raleigh his own self, 
that be,” exclaimed Lily Eliza, joyously, 


AT THE EELTON ARMS. 


75 


and then blushed for fear of another rebuke 
from her father. This time, however, she 
did not get it, for old Peter for business 
reasons was always anxious to propitiate 
the musician in the flying visits he paid 
them, and was far more concerned now in 
getting to the door in time to open it than 
in his daughter’s back-slidings. Besides, 
he really liked the open-handed young fel- 
low who paid up so regularly every quarter 
for the keep of his son without examining 
the items of the bill, who always came in 
with a smile and an outstretched hand, and 
was so inordinately grateful for the little 
they had done for the child. 

Well, Mrs. Haxtell, and how ’s the 
boy ? ” he cried with his cheery voice as he 
stood on the doorstep. I ’ve brought you 
a new kind of baccy to try, sir ; hope the 
youngster has been behaving himself, eh ? 
Ah, Roger, how does the world go with 
you ? And where ’s my Sonny ? ” 

There, now, to think of his father com- 
ing so unfortunate like, and he that ’s never 


76 AT THE RELTON ARMS. 

out at tea-time more than twice in a twelve- 
month/* fussed the landlady, dusting three 
chairs in succession, and wondering how 
her back hair was bearing the exertion ; 

that do seem hard, that do ; but there. 
Lady Kelton she come down and asked so 
coaxing like for him to go that I could n't 
find it in my heart to refuse her ; but that 
be the first time I 've let him out o’ my 
sight this many weeks. And I ’m sure I Ve 
been so doleful like all the time he ’s been 
gone that I won’t never let him go again, 
that I won’t ; I kept on thinkin’ somethin’ 
was going to happen to the precious, and 
I would n’t never see him again, and what 
would his father say then, when I ’d 
promised to look after him like my own — 
there, Mr. Raleigh, I feel as if somethin’ 
terrible might come to Master Sonny afore 
we set eyes on him again, that I do ! ” 

I hope not, Mrs. Haxtell, I hope not,” 
said Digby, encouragingly, wondering if he 
were a hard-hearted parent because he had 
none of the landlady’s nervous sensations 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 


77 


concerning his son. It would take a good 
deal to hurt Master Sonny, I fancy, and he 
will be in here directly turning everything 
upside down again to your heart’s content. 
Are you off, Mr. Roger ? Then I ’ll walk 
home with you, and have a pipe to get rid 
of the London smoke. Ah ! London is 
not fit for a dog this weather ! And will 
you send the boy down to the castle 
meadow when he comes in, Mrs. Haxtell ? 
Thanks ; let him come alone, and learn to 
be a man.” 

Only a few minutes later Lady Joan 
brought her piebald ponies to a standstill 
before the sign of the Relton Arms,” and 
threw the reins to her groom. 

Here we are, Mrs. Haxtell ; did you 
think I was going to keep him altogether ? 
I nearly did, he was so fascinating, and we 
had such a delightful flirtation together. 
He is the most charming little gentleman 
to flirt with, because he is never stupid 
enough to take it in for a moment. Look 
at him now,” as the boy flew into the land- 


78 AT THE EELTON ARMS. 

lady’s arms with a shout. Oh, you un- 
grateful little beggar, after all the cake 
and the jam I have been giving you ! 
Here, give me a kiss, Sonny, and I ’ll be 
off. What is it, Mrs. Haxtell ? His 
father, did you say ? Oh — yes — to be 
sure, his father — yes ! ” 

Fortunately for her, the landlady was too 
much engaged with the stormy caresses of 
the child to notice her, as she walked to 
the window and looked at two hens quarrel- 
ling over a grain of corn in the yard. 

Aye, my lady, and the child was to go 
down to the castle meadow all along of 
himself to find his father, to learn to be a 
man, was what he said. I bain’t one to 
make a fuss over trifles, but I don’t like to 
let the child go quite, and yet — ” 

What nonsense ! of course not ; how like 
a man,” said Lady Joan, contemptuously ^ 
besides, the child is much too tired to 
walk all that way. Now for my two 
kisses. Sonny ; I will make it three if you 
don’t give me them at once, sir! I will 


AT THE KELTON ARMS. 


79 


go and make it right with his father, Mrs. 
Haxtell, if you will tell Dick to take the 
ponies quietly home, please. And may I 
go across the orchard ? ” 

Eh, but she doan’t care what the towns- 
folk say, do she ? ” reflected Mrs. Haxtell, 
admiringly, as she watched the tall figure 
disappearing among the trees. 

I wonder what made me come,” 
thought Lady Joan to herself, as she 
climbed the stile into the castle meadow ; 
and her courage half failed her when she 
caught sight of a man in a brown felt hat 
that she had seen before, sitting on a frag- 
ment of the old ruined wall by the side of 
the brook. 

But he had already seen her, and was 
coming towards her; and with a reckless- 
ness which she evidenced at once by let- 
ting her skirt trail on the damp grass, she 
went on to meet him. 


CHAPTER V. 


Then marry me,” the musician was say- 
ing, half-an-hour later. It had not struck 
him before that she might not possibly want 
to do so. 

But I have already told you that I do 
not love you,” persisted Lady Joan, who 
was enjoying herself immensely. 

What does that matter ? It will come 
in time, it is sure to come. Besides, I love 
you ; is not that enough ? ” 

It would have been, to most of his lady 
friends ; but Lady Joan only caught the 
humor of his words, and laughed derisively. 

^^You think you are going to put me 
off by pretending to laugh,” he w^ent on 
patiently ; this was to show his superior 
knowledge of her character ; but the 
truth is that you dare not be serious, Lady 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 81 

Joan ; why don’t you give in to your real 
feelings and stop making a joke of life just 
this once ? ” 

I make a joke of life? ” she cried ; she 
was half in earnest now ; how is that 
possible unless one has realized its sad- 
ness? You enthusiasts who have never 
laughed at anything, and are always talk- 
ing about taking life seriously, you have 
never gone deep enough to see that it is 
serious. If you had, you would only laugh 
for the rest of your life, because — it would 
be impossible after you had once realized 
that to keep serious and live.” 

For the first time in his life the musician 
did not want to argue. 

Don’t you see that I love you as I have 
never loved any one before, as I could never 
love any one again?” he said humbly. 

How am I to believe that ? ” she re- 
torted sharply, and he flushed slightly. 

Is that quite fair of you ? Have I not 
been always perfectly open with you? I 
told you the story of my marriage the first 
6 


82 AT THE RELTON ARMS. 

time I ever met you, and I have told you 
to-day about poor little No — about Miss 
Bisley. Could any man do more ? 

^^No/' she said carelessly, ^^but you 
might very well have done less, — I mean, 
the whole town told me about Miss Bisley 
directly I came home from abroad, though, 
except for the name, the two accounts do 
not tally in the least. But then, nothing 
in Belton shrinks in the washing.”^ 

The musician flinched, and tried another 
tactic. 

Then I suppose you merely think T am 
a brute who is taking advantage of your 
loneliness to profess an affection for you 
which he does not feel ? A man has to 
pay a big penalty for your friendship, Lady 
Joan.” 

She would not have let him see it for the 
world, but she felt she had gone a little too 
far, and a rapid change came over her 
mood. 

It is not that ; I am afraid of myself, I 
think,” she said with a sigh, and she looked 
down at his boots. 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 


83 


His face lighted up. 

Then — ” he began eagerly ; but she 
put up her hand with a gesture of warning. 

No, no, you mistake me ; I do not be- 
lieve that it is in me to love anybody — 
for long. My friends say it is because I 
have never known a mother’s love ; but if 
my parents had lived they would simply 
have made me fight with them through 
their tiresome affection for me. Now, I 
know what you are going to say — that I 
am speaking with the spirit of the age, or 
some of that twaddle I have lieard before. 
If I am, it is you who have taught it me, 
for I don’t allow anybody else to mention 
the age to me ; I am sick of it and the 
people who make their living out of abus- 
ing it. I could never love you, or any- 
body. That ’s the truth, and — don’t you 
believe me?” 

Not quite,” he said, and looked at her 
in an unpleasantly direct way. 

Besides,” she said, 'rather awkwardly, 
catching at another loophole of escape. 


84 


AT THE KELTON ARMS. 


there is this Norah Bisley : how am I to 
know that she will not come back ? 

He shook his head, and she smiled at the 
guilelessness of his reply. 

I don’t think it is possible. You see, I 
wrote three times — ” 

The letters may have gone astray.” 

The third one I sent by hand, and it 
was returned to me unopened. I can see 
now that it is only what I might have ex- 
pected ; she did not have a thought apart 
from her father, and her father never liked 
me well enough to look on me in the light 
of a son-in-law. He took her away directly 
he suspected our liking for one another, 
and when they got together and away from 
me he must have persuaded her to give me 
up. I wrote to him and I wrote to her, but, 
as you know, with no avail. ' She was a 
lovable little thing, spoiled by her weak- 
ness of will, poor little Norah ! ” 

“ Poor little Norah ! ” she echoed half 
mockingly, and crumbled some mortar off 
the broken wall and watched it splash into 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 


85 


the water below. She was wondering how 
it was that she had been more fascinated in 
half-an-hoiir by handsome, empty-headed 
Jack Raleigh than she had been in three 
long years by this large-hearted musician, 
with the high forehead and the cavernous 
eyes, with his passion for metaphysics and 
Socialism, and his ardent desires to reform 
society and the world in his own lifetime. 
Yet she found him interesting sometimes, 
generally when he was not there and she 
was thinking about him, and she wondered 
again why he did not interest her more, 
and whether she would not have tumbled 
into a commonplace engagement with him 
if her parents had been alive and he had 
been asked to dine at the Court, like any 
ordinary young man, and she had been for- 
bidden, like any ordinary young woman, to 
come down to the inn and play with his 
child. But she had no parents to impose 
conventionality upon her, and she had 
gloried in her liberty for twenty-five years, 
and she was loth to give it up now for the 


86 AT THE KELTON AKMS. 

sake of a man who, she felt sure, would 
bore her in a week with his desperate en- 
thusiasms, and whom she was not even sure 
that she loved. No, she could not marry 
him, she felt sure, and she looked up to say 
so, and met his restless eyes watching her 
with such a boy’s eagerness that she again 
went off on a side issue. 

am not livable with, that is the 
truth,” she said rather weakly, and crum- 
bled some more mortar off the wall, and 
wished he would not look at her so gloom- 
ily. He was thinking that the courtship 
was not going as smoothly as he expected 
it would, and beginning dimly to under- 
stand that for the only time in his expe- 
r-ienQe he was humbling himself before a 
woman who was not going to fall a victim 
to his persuasions ; and the discovery did 
not make him more eloquent nor less hum- 
ble, though it tended to make him look at 
the question still more blindly from his 
own point of view, and he told himself 
again, obstinately, that he could not live 
without her for his wife. 


AT THE EELTON ARMS. 87 

“ Lady Joan/’ he said suddenly, is it 
me that you dislike, or marriage ? ” 

“ Both,” she said, and laughed heartily, 
and became swiftly grave again, and came 
up to him and took both his hands, an un- 
wonted action that brought the color to his 
cheeks ; don’t you see, my dear friend, that 
if we were to marry I should plague your 
life out, and you would never write another 
note of music, and Mrs. Reginald Routh 
and all the others would point at me with 
invective ? And you would bore me to the 
verge of extinction in a month ! Of course 
if you did n’t like me it might work better, 
because then I should have to make you 
fall in love with me, and that would pre- 
vent it from being such a deadly dull affair. 
Or if I hated you I might do it, because 
then we could live our separate lives, and 
there would be nothing to spoil. Don’t you 
see how marriage always spoils things ? It 
is never romantic ; it is expedient, that ’s 
all. It does for people who are not fond of 
one another, or for people who do not feel 


88 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 


such things ; but for two people who are 
in love, and one of them a hypersensitive, 
musician — bah ! it would be madness ! 
Not that I am in love, of course.’^ 

He chose to ignore the feminine way in 
which she concluded , and as she dropped 
his hands and swung away from him, he 
found himself feeling for his tobacco pouch, 
and he reflected that the courtship was not 
much more romantic than the married life 
she pictured. 

Then you believe in perpetual engage- 
ments ? ’’ he asked, for the sake of saying 
something. 

Not a bit of it,’’ she replied gayly, lean- 
ing over the broken wall and watching the 
creatures in the water below ; engagements 
simply mean all the conventional draw- 
backs without the moral conveniences. No, 
there is only one way out of it, and that 
won’t work when you come to examine it.” 

^^And what is that?” he asked, like a 
man, rashly. 

To marry some one who does n’t mat- 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 


89 


ter, and be in love with some one else/’ slie 
replied carelessly, and kept her face averted. 

He rolled up his cigarette and lighted it, 
and wondered whether women ever dis- 
cussed among themselves these subjects 
which they had no diffidence in approach- 
ing with men. 

No, it would hardly work, I am afraid,” 
he said slowly. Lady Joan, it is an ab- 
surdly old-fashioned thing to say, but do 
you know I fancy, after all, that marriage 
is the only way out of it ? ” 

She turned round and faced him with 
hot cheeks and angry eyes. 

I' think you are merely abusing your 
privilege as my friend,” she cried ; I am 
not going to stay here for you to draw me 
out and then — then laugh at me. It is 
time we closed this — this absurd interview, 
and I wish — I wish 1 had known you were 
here before I started for my walk. Do you 
suppose that I would say anything to you 
that the whole world might not hear ? ” 

He certainly did suppose so from quite 


90 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 


recent experience, but he only apologized 
humbly for having his meaning mistaken, 
and allowed her to retrace her steps across 
the field without uttering any commonplace 
about meeting again as friends. Perhaps 
he knew quite well that when they did 
meet again she would be by far the most 
self-possessed of the two. 

The musician walked back to the inn 
and tried to persuade himself that he was a 
disappointed man. 

My engagements never do seem to go 
right,” he thought dejectedly, as he leaned 
out of the parlor window and looked vaguely 
among the fruit-trees. The door was pushed 
open from without, and a rush of red sun- 
shine and childish footsteps came into the 
room. 

Here I are, daddy ! Where is you, 
daddy? I’ve been a naughty boy, 'wdly 
naughty Nanny says, ’cos I did n’t say 
grace at tea-time. Why don’t you never 
say grace, my daddy ? When I are a big 
man I are n’t never going to say grace no 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 91 

more ! Nanny says I are to kiss you free 
times, and did you bring any sweets for 
me, daddy ?” 

That will do, my son, yes,” said Digby, 
nervously, as the boy clambered on his 
knee and proceeded to cover him with 
sticky embraces ; Nanny is always right, 
of course, but I think twice will be enough. 
Thanks. The sweets are in this pocket, so 
you need not turn out all the others. And 
you must not have any unless you stop 
jumping.” 

The musician was not fond of children, 
and he always imagined his own was going 
to break his neck or damage himself in 
some way every time he came into the 
room. Sonny on his part had his own 
views concerning this mysterious daddy 
who came and went so strangely, and who 
was always going to chastise him severely 
according to Mrs. Haxtell, but never did 
anything worse than bring him sweets, and 
hold him by his sash until he was nearly 
suffocated. 


92 AT THE RELTON ARMS. 

And now for my story, daddy,’’ lie 
shouted, with his mouth full of sugar-plums. 

Be quick please, my daddy ; once upon a 
time — go on, daddy ! ” 

Once upon a time,” began the musician 
vaguely, and his thoughts strayed away to 
the lithesome figure swaying to and fro 
on the broken wall, and he tried hard to 
realize his crestfallen condition now that 
she had refused him. 

Yes, daddy, yes ; go on, please, my 
daddy : are you forgotten the end of my 
story, daddy dear ? ” pleaded the restless 
spirit in his arms. 

Oh, dear, once upon a time there was — 
there was — oh, confound it all, there was 
a beautiful lady, was n’t there ? ” he began 
wearily. 

A booful lady ? Welly booful, daddy ? ” 

Yery beautiful, my son.” 

^^Oh,” solemnly, and what sort of 
daddy did she have ? ” 

Eh, what ? Daddy ? Oh — she did n’t 
have one,” said the musician, oblivious of 


AT THE KELTON ARMS. 93 

morality ; he was going through an elo- 
quent speech in his mind which he might 
have said in the castle meadow if only he 
had not been so absurdly nervous. 

Oh,” said the baby voice, growing shrill 
with interest, did n’t she never have no 
daddy at all ? ” 

Of course, thought the musician, if he 
had said that to her instead of stuttering 
over a few commonplaces she would have 
found him irresistible at once. 

Daddy, dear,'' implored Sonny, tug- 
ging at his coat suggestively. 

■ Oh, the devil take the story ! ” shouted 
the musician ; did n’t I tell you she never 
had a daddy ? Don’t ask so many questions. 
Sonny.” 

The big blue eyes became tearful at the 
unusual tone of anger and at the untimely 
end of the story, and Digby’s conscience 
smote him a little. 

aren’t crying, only little girls cry,” 
gasped the child between his hardly sup- 
pressed sobs. was only just thinking. 


94 AT THE EELTON ARMS. 

daddy, what a welly funny booful lady 
she were, daddy.” 

Yes, my son,” said the musician, very 
much in the tone of respect he would have 
used to a man of his own age who was 
battling with some terrible grief, ^^yes, 
my son, she was a very funny beautiful 
lady, so funny that daddy could not under- 
stand her at all, although he loved her so 
much. And she laughed at daddy, and 
would n’t be kind to him, though she was 
kind to the whole world besides.” 

The musician almost choked with his 
own emotion this time ; but Sonny jumped 
up and down wuth glee at having at last 
discovered a human chord in the mythical 
beautiful lady. 

Oh, so she were a naughty booful lady, 
daddy ? Then she won’t have jam for tea 
next Sunday, will she, daddy dear ? ” 

The wooden door that led into the yard 
creaked open again, and again the red 
light from the setting sun flooded the 
little room. 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 


95 


^^Yes, Sonny, of course, she was a 
naughty beautiful lady, that ’s just what 
she was ! But do you know Tve come back 
to say that I won’t be naughty any more 
just yet, at least if daddy lets me, and I’m 
going to be kind to him — at least, if 
daddy wants me. Daddy, do say some- 
thing. May I be good for a change, and 
will you let me be kind to you ? I’ve come 
to say I am sorry, like a good little girl ; 
and — I may have jam for tea next Sun- 
day, may n’t I ? Oh, daddy, do say some- 
thing, and don’t look so doleful ! Don’t 
you understand ? I was wrong, and you 
were right, and — oh, how stupid it all is ! 
Why — daddy — I — I don’t believe you 
want me now !” 

And Lady Joan flung herself into the 
old high-backed wooden settle, and 
crossed her feet, and broke into her mad- 
dening, mocking laugh as if to hide some- 
thing she was ashamed of showing. But 
the musician, who knew her better than 
she thought he did, in spite of his almost 


96 AT THE EELTON ARMS. 

childish ignorance of woman's nature, 
went up to her and put the child on her 
lap, and smiled down into her upturned, 
laughing face. 

We both want our beautiful lady, don’t 
we. Sonny ? And may I make my confes- 
sion too, Lady Joan ? I was not sure that 
I did want you so desperately after you 
sent me away just now. But I found that 
I did directly you opened the door and 
the sunshine came in, and I can never do 
without you again. But it is better to 
understand one another at starting, is n’t 
it?” 

Much better. And ideals are such 
bosh when we have grown out of our short 
frocks. So the understanding is quite 
complete ; you don’t know how much you 
love me, so we will call it desperately, 
and I don’t know how much I love you, so 
we will call it desperately too. You have 
been in love shoals of times before, and 
I — well, I am capable of falling in love 
with some one else on my wedding-day. 
So neither of us will be disappointed if 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 


97 


it does not answer, but we have agreed 
to try. Hey-day, what fun it is ! The 
lonely lady at the Court marrying the 
musician at the inn ; the lady has the es- 
tablishment, and the musician has the 
money to keep it up : if you were truly 
modern you would have both, and be 
a risen cabinet-maker. Eelton will have 
enough to talk about for a year. But you 
will not behave as if we were engaged, 
yet, will you ? I — I don’t feel as if I 
could quite stand it ; do you understand ? ” 

He had never heard her voice falter like 
that before, and he nodded to show that 
he quite understood. But she sprang to 
her feet with one of her quick gestures 
before he had time to realize the intoxi- 
cating feeling of that moment, and he 
experienced a sensation of chill. 

‘^What wickedness to keep this child 
up so late ; come along. Sonny lad, I told 
Nanny that I would put you to bed for 
^ a treat, and daddy is going to stay here 
and smoke his pipe.” 


7 


98 AT THE KELTON ARMS. 

And she vanished up the primitive 
staircase which led straight from the par- 
lor up to the room above ; and daddy 
was left somewhat with the feeling of 
having consented to Lady Joan’s sugges- 
tion of marriage without receiving the 
right to kiss her, and he sat by the window 
again and looked among the fruit-trees, 
and called himself the happiest man in the 
world, and felt that he would be able to 
write his Swinburne song when the house 
was quiet. 

A third time the wooden door creaked, 
and a third time the red sunlight filled the 
room. But the musician did not notice it, 
for he was still looking out of the window 
into the orchard, and he was telling him- 
self with a sense of profound relief that his 
engagement was at last going right. 

There was the sound of a low, soft, glad 
cry in the little inn parlor, and something 
glided in noiselessly, hesitated for a moment, 
and then sped across the ray of light to 
where he sat by the window. And the 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 


99 


musician turned his eyes away from the 
fruit-trees then, and fixed them on the ap- 
parition before him, and a look of dumb 
amazement began to creep slowly over his 
face. 

^‘Digby, I’ve come at last. You said 
you would not mind waiting ten years for 
me, and it has only been one ; yet, oh ! such 
a weary long one to me, Digby ! But it 
has not been my fault, it has n’t really, 
dear ; they never told me, and papa stopped 
your two first letters, and Roger Brill — it 
was Roger, was n’t it ? — never brought me 
the last one at all. It was all a mistake, 
I can’t tell you now, but I found it out and 
gave them the slip, and came straight here. 
Oh, Digby, you are not angry with me, are 
you ? I never meant to keep you waiting 
so, but I did not find it all out till yester- 
day, so I could not come before. Oh, it has 
been so sad, waiting for you. And I have 
been so ill too, Digby ; they did not know 
what was the matter with me, but I knew 
all the time. It is all over now, though, 


100 


AT THE KELTON ARMS. 


and we are going to be happy at last, are n’t 
we ? And may I have my kiss now, the 
one you promised me ? I think if you had 
kissed me before I went away I should never 
have been ill. But I am going to be happy 
now, so happy. Oh, Digby, I feel so 
greedy over my happiness that I am 
frightened of its slipping away again. Is 
it because I have startled you that you 
are so silent ? Tell me you are not angry 
with me, Digby, — and — when may I have 
my kiss, please ? ” 

He took her mechanically into his arms 
and kissed the mouth that was held up to 
him, and he experienced dully the sort of 
shock that an unconventional man feels 
when a woman he has always considered 
the type of purity does something which a 
woman of the world would know better 
than to risk her reputation by doing. Up- 
stairs, in the room overhead, he could hear 
Lady Joan singing his child to sleep. He 
passed his hand across his brow and won- 
dered in a vague sort of way how it was 


AT THE EELTON ARMS. 101 

all going to end ; it seemed years since Lady 
Joan had spoken to him. 

^^No, Norah child, of course I am not 
angry with you ; how could any one be 
that ? But — ” 

I don’t mind anything if you are not 
angry with me. Only, why are you so 
quiet ? Have you been suffering too, Dig- 
by ; have n’t they been kind to you ? ” 

Who ? the fates ? No, I fancy they 
have not been kind to me. Did you come 
alone, childie ? ” 

I came with old nurse ; she is at the 
station. Digby, tell me, have you been 
ill?” 

No, I have not been ill ; I have been 
working rather hard, and perhaps worrying 
as well. Forgive me, dear ; you must own 
it is all rather startling ? ” 

She put her arms round him, and laughed 
her low, soft laugh ; and he writhed at the 
contrast it made to Lady Joan’s loud mock- 
ing one, which still rang in his ears. 

Of course it is ; I feel as if I had begun 


102 


AT THE KELTON ARMS. 


to live all over again after being asleep in 
a cold, dark place ever since last year. 
Have you ever felt like that, Digby ? Oh, 
I have never asked after Sonny ; how is 
he ? Has he gone to bed ? May I go up 
and kiss him?” 

No, stay here,” he said vehemently, and 
then bit his moustache savagely when she 
opened her great eyes at him ; and he added 
in a quieter tone, he is quite bonny, but 
we — we won’t disturb him yet. There is 
a lady with him who — who has been kind 
to me, and — and she will be coming down 
perhaps — ” 

“ A lady ? Oh, I see,” wonderingly. I 
am glad she has been kind to you — very. 
Do you like her ? ” 

Should he tell her then ? It was not yet 
absolutely necessary.' 

Yes, I like her,” he said in a toneless 
voice, and he forced himself to smile reas- 
suringly at her. 

I should like to see her, then. Hark, 
she is coming downstairs ; how merry she 


AT THE HELTON ARMS. 103 

is, your friend ! ” as the full healthy laugh 
came down the stairs. 

If there had been any means, however 
desperate, of putting off the crisis for an- 
other ten seconds, the musician would have 
stooped to it. But he realized that there 
was none, and with the same flash of con- 
sciousness as he realized it he braced him- 
self to meet the event as manfully as such 
a pitiful situation would allow. 

Norah,” he said sternly, putting her off 
his knee and standing up in front of her, 
I have something to say to you. Will 
you be brave and hear me ? It may all 
come right, of course, but — this lady was 
kind to my boy — and to me, when no one 
else would hold out a hand to us; and I 
thought you had forgotten me, and so — I 
asked her to marry me. It was only this 
afternoon, and of course — ” 

The noisy peals of laughter came right 
into the room through the inner door, and 
Lady Joan stood in the dull glow which 
was all that remained of the sunlight. 


104 AT THE RELTON ARMS. 

Oh, daddy, what do you think Sonny 
said ? Why — who — what is it ? 

Something white, and quivering, and 
small, had fallen with a thud across her 
feet, and again the low, long child’s cry 
with the joy gone out of it soiinded in the 
stillness of the summer evening. 

The musician had sunk on a chair with 
his face in his hands. 


CHAPTER VI. 


engagements never do seem to go 
right,” sighed the musician. 

He was sitting in the little bedroom up- 
stairs by the side of his sleeping son, with 
his thumb tightly clasped in a fat brown 
hand. But he was not thinking of Sonny, 
although the clasp of the tiny fingers was 
comfor-ting, as betokening some one who 
still believed in him. 

There is a curse upon my love affairs,” 
vsaid the musician. Why should those 
letters never reach her ? And why did she 
choose that moment of all others to come 
back ? Another man might do a dirty 
trick and not be found out. God knows I 
never wanted to harm a woman in my life, 
least of all those two ; and yet I ’ve blun- 
dered in and got engaged to both of them 


106 AT THE EELTON AEMS. 

at once; and I’ve broken the heart of the 
purest and most innocent child — merciful 
heavens, what have n’t I done ? And here 
I am, left up here like a great fool, while 
they are tearing my character to ribbons 
downstairs. Was there ever such an unfor- 
tunate brute as myself ? ” 

The musician’s voice became husky, 
whether from self-pity, or from the recol- 
lection of the poor little scared face of the 
child who had found her happiness only to 
lose it again, it would be impossible to say. 

Women are such deuced odd things,” 
continued the musician, complainingly ; 
“ they expect you to look on while they 
scratch one another’s eyes out, and then if 
you touch a hair of their heads you have the 
whole lot of them against you. Bless her ! 
T would give my life to undo what I have 
done to her to-day.” 

Which did he mean ? Perhaps he hardly 
knew. But Lady Joan did all the while that 
she sat by Norah Bisley on the horse-hair 
sofa, downstairs in the oak-panelled parlor. 


AT THE HELTON ARMS. 107 

The child stirred in his sleep. 

Happy Sonny/' murmured the musi- 
cian, sentimentally, your turn has yet to 
come. Why can’t children always remain 
children ? Norah ought never to have grown 
up ; she was meant for eternal childhood. 
It was a mistake to make Lady Joan a 
child at all, she ought to have been born a 
full-grown woman, /ought never to have 
been born at all, of course. Who arranges 
these things ? ” 

Then he went to the table by the win- 
dow, and cleared it of Sonny’s monkey 
without a tail, and the fat pink pin-cushion, 
and the pale green glass pot with a lid, and 
the shining porcelain shepherdess with a 
chipped crook, and the knitted toilet-cover 
that entrapped the legs of all these orna- 
ments, and sat down to write the best song 
he had ever composed, to some words by 
George Meredith. 

Men are always brutes,” said Lady 
Joan, but this one has only become so by 
accident. Stupid people do more harm 


108 


AT THE KELTON ARMS. 


than bad ones, ever so much. The fates 
will help you out of a hole if you have been 
a clever sinner, but they will lay a pitfall for 
you if you are a blundering, good-intentioned 
sort of creature. The fact is, this world of 
ours was made for clever people, and the 
fools haven’t a chance. That is why he 
has gone wrong.” 

Is he a fool then ? ” asked the weary 
voice on the sofa. One disillusionment 
more than another did not matter now that 
her idol was broken. 

He lives by his emotions, and he has 
no sense of proportion. It comes to the 
same thing. He had no intention of being 
faithless to you, and if you had not gone 
away he would have married you, and 
remained dull and virtuous to the end of 
his days. But you did go away, and I 
came home ; and he can’t live without a 
woman, and so he persuaded himself that 
his friendship for me was love. That. was 
how it was done. Perhaps I encouraged 
him too. He was interesting to me, and 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 109 

he was never in love with me, so I amused 
myself by trying to fascinate him. I can’t 
help being a woman.” 

Are women like that too ? ” thought 
the other, and she added out loud, I am 
a woman too, but — ” and left her sentence 
unfinished. 

No, you are not a woman, you are only 
a child,” said Lady Joan ; “ the world is a 
place for you to play in. You were born 
to be happy, and you will never have to 
realize the things I have been telling 
you.” 

I shall never be happy again,” said the 
tired voice, with a sob. 

^^We all say that at eighteen; it com- 
forts us sometimes to be the most miserable 
person in the world. Then we turn round 
a bit, and the sun comes out again, and 
some one gives us a tonic, and we endow 
a cot at the hospital, or give a farthing 
meal to five hundred brats in the East End, 
and then we go on again. You have never 
been in love before, of course ? ” 


110 AT THE RELTON ARMS. 

Don’t/’ moaned the other from the 
corner of the unsympathetic sofa. 

The clear calm tones of her Mentor soft- 
ened a little. 

I don’t want to hurt you, Norah ; I 
only mean that if you go in for loving once 
an a lifetime and that sort of thing, you 
really cannot properly understand the utter 
insouciance of an emotional man like Digby. 
He will love you more than ever now that 
you have come back, and you will be ten 
times happier than if you had been married 
straight oJ^ without any drawbacks. You 
have got rid of your ideals, to begin with, 
which most of them do not accomplish 
until after marriage, and that is always a 
risk. And you will find there is lots of 
time to be happy.” 

“ Oh,” said the other, in an altered tone, 
sitting upright, and speaking with startling 
emphasis, and do you really mean to say 
that you think I should marry him now ? ” 

Lady Joan did not turn a hair, vulgarly 
speaking; she felt she had done wonders 


AT THE KELTON ARMS. Ill 

already by getting rid of the battered, hope- 
less little voice, and she merely smiled to 
herself in the twilight in a triumphant, 
self-satisfied manner. 

You are to come home with me now, 
and I will send down for your maid, and 
you shall stay the night and get rested. I 
suppose you have eaten nothing for hours ? 
Then how can you expect to take a proper 
view of things ? Half the troubles of life 
come from a bad digestion ; it ’s not ro- 
mantic, but then I don’t belong to your 
musical set.” 

And she carried Norah off through the 
back door, leaving Mrs. Haxtell with ma- 
terial for a year’s gossip, and a note for 
the musician to the effect that he was to 
come up to the Court after dinner and 
give them some music. 

That is the cleverest woman I know,” 
he sputtered, as he plunged his head into 
a basin of cold water after reading the 
scrawled scrap of paper. And he added 
grimly, I suppose she will tell me which 


112 AT THE RELTON ARMS. 

one I am to marry. And I am not in a 
position to object.” 

But he felt grateful to her for asking 
him in such a commonplace sort of way, 
and he put the song he had been writing 
into the pocket of his Inverness coat, and 
walked up to the Court in the dusk. 

She was just as commonplace in her 
greeting. He found them in the big draw- 
ing-room near the open window, and he 
had to walk the whole length of the room 
before they took any notice of the butler’s 
announcement, or turned round. Lady Joan 
was knitting a large wliite shawl, and talk- 
ing vigorously ; Norah was lying silently 
on a couch, with her great sentimental 
eyes looking out into the garden ; and the 
curate, who had also dropped in after 
dinner, was sipping his coffee and listening 
deferentially to his hostess. 

Of course, indifference is the charac- 
teristic of the times, as you say, Mr. John- 
son, but I am not sure that it matters 
much. There is not much to choose be- 


AT THE EELTON ARMS. 113 

tween the negative virtue of the present 
day and the positive wickedness of our 
forefathers.” 

Mr. Johnson ventured the unavoidable 
reply that negative virtue was worse than 
positive wickedness, because it professed 
more. 

That is true, but we must continue to 
be miserable sinners in some way or other, 
or else the Litany would have to be ex- 
punged, and that would offend the Conser- 
vatives/’ said Lady Joan, with a flippancy 
which was merely to hide the fact that she 
was feeling what women call overwrought ; 
and she turned to Ligby to conceal her 
consciousness of having been extravagant 
instead of witty. Ah, Mr. Raleigh, how 
do you do ? How good of you to come 
on such a short notice. You have seen 
Norah to-day, I think ? Our new curate, 
Mr. Johnson. We were just longing for 
some music.” 

Digby was again thankful for her sang 
froid. He touched her fingers, and bowed 
8 


114 


AT THE BELTON- ARMS. 


to the others, and he took his black colFee 
from the tray presented to him by the 
butler, and apologized in the most ordi- 
nary manner for not being in evening dress. 

And may we have some music, please ? 
Mr. Raleigh is a musician, you know, Mr. 
Johnson; perhaps you know his songs, 
though ? ” 

Mr. Johnson said he was passionately 
fond of music, and he knew Mr. Raleigh’s 
name quite well, and had once sung a song 
of his called Love’s Sweet Illusions.” 

I have not written a song of that 
name ; I never write ballads,” said the 
musician, crushingly, as he opened the 
piano. 

Something stormy, please,” said Lady 
Joan, carelessly ; “ it is so hot that if you 
played anything sentimental I think it 
might affect even my unmusical nerves.” 

Something of your own,” said Norah. 
They were the first words she had spoken, 
and the musician glanced nervously in her 
direction. 


AT THE RELTOX ARMS. 115 

He sat down and played the song he had 
just written, and hummed the words to 
show how it went. They were taken from 
the Shaving of Shagpat,” and the music 
was full of the reckless passion and mean- 
ing of the original. 

“ Whether we die or we live, 

Matters it now no more ; 

Life hath naught further to give ; 

Love is its crown and its core ; 

Come to us either, we ’re rife, — 

Death or life ! 

“ Death can take not away, 

Darkness and light are the same ; 

We are beyond the pale ray. 

Wrapt in a rosier flame ; 

Welcome which will to our breath, — 

Life or death ! ” 

When he began to play, all the stormy 
and conflicting feelings of the last few 
hours passed through his mind, and he was 
seized with the grimness and humor of the 
situation in which he found himself, and he 
played better than either of the two women, 
who were so strangely woven into his life, 
had ever heard him play before. When he 


116 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 


reached the second verse he stopped hum- 
ming the words, though none of them 
noticed it ; and when he came to the end 
no one spoke for some seconds. 

The musician was thinking that he knew 
now which one he wanted to marry, and 
that it did not matter if his love affairs 
went wrong so long as there was music 
to be made. 

Lady Joan went on with her shawl, and 
reflected that if she lived to be a hundred 
she should never understand musical people 
or their ways. 

Norah lay with her browm eyes full of 
tears, and she was thinking that love was 
the strongest thing in the world,, for it 
could outlive its ideals. 

The curate was not thinking at all, and he 
got up and put down his cup with a clatter. 

i^Yery sweet and pretty,” he said; ^^it 
quite reminds me of a little Italian thing 
I once heard on a military band at Lea- 
mington. Have you ever taken the waters 
at Leamington, Mr. Raleigh ? ” 


AT THE HELTON ARMS. 117 

Play something else,” said Lady Joan, 
abruptly, for the spell was working well, 
she thought, and she smiled triumphantly 
again at the tears in Norah’s eyes. 

This time Lady Joan walked to the 
window and stepped out on the terrace. 

Have you seen the lake in moonlight, 
Mr. Johnson ? ” she called out when the 
music stopped ; and the curate followed 
her into the garden. 

The musician crossed over to the couch 
by the other window, and sat down on a 
chair close to it. 

^^Norah,” he said in a low tone, ^^do 
you know when I wrote the last thing I 
played ? ” 

She said nothing, and her fingers trembled, 
wrote it when you went away, last 
time, with your father. It was full of 
tears for you.” 

She still kept her face turned from him, 
and she spoke almost in a whisper. 

And the other ? The song ? ” 

Guess,” he said, also in a whisper. 


118 AT THE KELTON ARMS. 

She swept her tearful eyes round upon 
him searchingly, hungrily. 

Was it this evening — after — V 
He bowed his head gravely. Her hands 
went out to him impetuously. 

Oh, Digby, did it make you feel all 
that?” 

There is no doubt,” said Lady Joan, 
loudly, that our sympathies or our antip- 
athies make us sometimes imagine a like- 
ness where it cannot exist. I remember 
when I was a small child and came to stay 
with my great-uncle here, I used to invent 
every kind of excuse for going down to the 
post-office, because I thought the boy be- 
hind the counter was like a cousin of mine 
1 had a romantic admiration for at the 
time. And of course you know how there 
are some days when everybody in the street 
reminds you of some one you don’t want to 
meet, and others when you feel you have 
not the least affinity to your own sister. 
The fact is, family likeness is all rubbish, 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 119 

like most of the traditions we have grown 
up with; I mean, there is just as much 
chance of two strangers being alike, which 
you have just proved yourself, Mr. Johnson, 
by supposing Mr. Raleigh and my little 
friend Norah to be brother and sister. 
Shall we go in, now, or would you like 
another turn round the garden ? ” 

The curate felt he had been sufficiently 
battered in that one brief stroll to the lake, 
and he consulted his watch and said he had 
some work waiting for him at home. So 
they came back again through the open 
window, and found Norah still lying on the 
couch, and the musician on the low chair at 
her side. 

“What a horrid little man,” said Lady 
Joan, when the curate had left. 

“ Is he ? ” said Norah, vaguely. 

“ Oh, I don’t think he ’s bad,” said the. 
musician, cheerfully. 

Their hostess made a huge effort, and 
preserved her smile. 

“ It may be because I had to entertain 


120 AT THE RELTON ARMS. 

him/^ she said, knitting busily at her large 
white shawl. 

^^Why didn’t you leave him alone?” 
they asked, with the sublime innocence of 
the selfish. 

Because that was what you did,” she 
replied. 

Oh, but we thought you were getting 
on so well with him,” said Norah. 

Besides,” added Digby, you need not 
have asked him into the garden.” 

Perhaps I needn’t,” said Lady Joan, 
and counted her stitches. 

I am so dreadfully worried about some- 
thing,” she said, presently. 

What about ? ” they asked, feeling that 
it had somehow been the atmosphere of the 
whole day. 

The dilapidation of my pig-styes ; Jones 
says two of them will go on for some time, 
but the others want repairing. Now, is it 
worth while to have two repaired, or shall 
I wait until they all fall, to pieces, and put 
up brick ones ? ” 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 121 

That is a question,” said Norah, gravely. 

The musician laughed heartily. 

‘‘ What a fuss ladies make about trifles. If 
you had a man to manage your affairs — ” 

But 1 have n’t,” she said quickly, and 
looked him full in the face ; 1 thought of 

getting one, but — it has fallen through.” 

The musician did not laugh any more, 
and Norah’s big eyes began to shine again. 
Lady Joan felt she had fully deserved that 
little bit of revenge. But it was not amus- 
ing enough to carry any further, and she 
was beginning to weary of the protracted 
love-making of the day, especially now that 
she was no longer a principal actor in the 
play. So she folded up her work elabo- 
rately, and pinned it in a white silk hand- 
kerchief, and put her hand on her mouth to 
conceal a yawn. 

It has been the longest day I have ever 
spent. I suppose it is the weather. Would 
you shut the piano, Mr. Raleigh ? You 
look tired to death, Norah, and I am going 
to take you to bed. Come along at once, 
please.” 


122 


AT THE EELTON ARMS. 


They all rose to their feet, and there was 
an embarrassing moment. But Lady Joan 
took another little bit of revenge here, and 
kept her arm round Norah’s waist, and her 
sharp eyes on both of them. 

You will come to breakfast to-morrow, 
and bring Sonny with you? Say good- 
night and come, Norah, I am so sleepy.” 

So they all shook hands frigidly, and the 
musician asked what time breakfast was; 
and they left him alone in the long drawing- 
room, and went upstairs. Lady Joan still 
found him there when she came down again, 
half-an-hour later ; he was at the piano, but 
he got up as she came in. 

“You are the finest woman I ever met,” 
he said with emotion. 

She made a gesture of impatience. 

“Don’t cover me with virtues I don’t 
possess ; I can’t stand it,” she said sharply ; 
she had a very unmusical voice, he thought. 
“Don’t you know that my god is expe- 
diency? It is the only one that is any 
good for this world. I don’t want you to 


AT THE RELTON ARMS 


123 


marry Norah, or I should not have come 
back to the inn to ask you to marry me. 
Do you suppose my pride suffered nothing 
by that ? However, you are going to marry 
her because it is absolutely the only way 
out of it, and I have been obliged to give 
in to you both. But for Heaven’s sake 
don’t imagine I am doing it from unselfish- 
ness, or any of that bosh, because I’m not.” 

Then you have not forgiven me ? ” he 
asked humbly. 

shall never forgive you,” said Lady 
Joan, decidedly ; is it not an insult that 
you should suppose me capable of for- 
giveness ? ” 

Perhaps it is,” said the musician, 
thoughtfully. ^^Why w^as I born so ac- 
cursedly unlucky ? ” 

I ’m afraid 1 can’t tell you. But you 
seem to be going to have all you want now, 
so it is about time you ceased railing at 
your fate. I suppose if I were properly 
unselfish I should efface myself at once, 
and part from you in an affecting scene. 
But the people who make affecting scenes 


124 AT THE EELTON ARMS. 

are apt to forget that they have got to 
meet again afterwards as ordinary actors 
in an ordinary play, and then the memory 
of the affecting scene makes them sheepish ; 
so I prefer to tell you that I am merely and 
vulgarly angry with you for inviting me to 
make a fool of myself. Not that I envy 
that poor child upstairs either ; she does n’t 
understand you a bit, and you will wound 
her half-a-dozen times a day. It is not my 
affair, however, and you will have to get 
through it together somehow ; I wash my 
hands of you both.” 

The musician said he thought they might 
manage it, perhaps ; and Lady Joan pulled 
down the blind in eloquent silence, and 
rang the bell. He took the hint and held 
out his hand. 

Good-night. You will come to break- 
fast ? ” 

Since 3mu say so ; I always do what 
you tell me,” he said, with truth. 

No, you don’t,” she contradicted, or 
you would never have cajoled me into say- 


AT THE EELTON ARMS. 


125 


ing I would marry you. If you had done 
what I told you to-day all this trouble 
would not have arisen. How brutally for- 
getful men are ! ” 

Which was hardly fair of her, he thought, 
as it was his distinct recollection that she 
had really ended in asking him to marry 
her, and had hardly waited for his assent 
to the proposal ; if she had meant what she 
said in the castle meadow, and kept to it, 
there would have been no complications at 
all. And the musician finished his cigar in 
the orchard of the Relton Arms,” and 
came to the conclusion that Lady Joan with 
all h^r excellent qualities had an unpleas- 
ant amount of worldly wisdom and egoism 
in her composition, which he had never 
discovered until he had seen it contrasted 
with the womanly innocence of his dear 
little betrothed. 

How brutally forgetful men are ! ” were 
the words that remained on the lips of the 
worldly wise woman all through that hot 
night in August. 


CHAPTER YII. 


There were many and various opinions 
concerning the fresh engagement of the 
musician. His lady friends could at first 
hardly believe that he should overlook them 
all, and choose a wife who was not one of 
themselves, and had never attended the 
receptions in the West End studio; but 
when they learnt that it was not only a 
fact, but that the date of the marriage was 
fixed, they at once did their best to meet 
the situation gracefully by buying the most 
appropriate wedding presents they could 
find, in the shape of biscuit boxes shaped 
like drums, and clocks mounted in lyres. 
This caused considerable rivalry among his 
pupils, which was not lessened by their 
desire to meet his betrothed, and their jeal- 
ousy when this benefit was vouchsafed to 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 127 

one or another of them ; they wondered 
among themselves whether they would be 
asked to call, and they allowed the musi- 
cian to talk about her with a generosity 
which was three parts diplomacy. 

Mrs. Keginald Routh presumed upon her 
intimacy with the musician so far as to in- 
vite Norah to stay with her. 

It has been the wish of my heart to see 
dear Mr. Digby married,” was what she 
told every one, with her frank smile ; in- 
deed, I have been trying to get him a wife 
for some years now, only it was so impos- 
sible to find one good enough. 1 have no 
doubt that Miss Bisley is all that could be 
desired, and one must leave something to a 
higher power sometimes ; but I cannot help 
taking a little to my own credit as well, 
and I am convinced that Mr. Digby would 
never have thought of looking out for a 
wife at all if it had not been for my per- 
suasions ; he was far too fond of Ibsen 
and Schopenhauer and Bernard Shaw, and 
all those tiresome people. At all events, I 


128 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 


never allowed a week to pass without ask- 
ing him to dinner, and the picture of my 
domestic happiness must have done some- 
thing for him. Ah, well, my work is done 
now ; and thank God my ideal of friend- 
ship is too high to stand in the way of his 
marrying, though I have felt tow^ards him 
like a sister, and it is hard at first to give 
up my place to another. Bnt at least I 
know how to be generous, and she shall 
come and stay with me at once, so that 
there may be one friend in London for her 
when she is married. She will have to let 
me call then ! And I shall be able to give 
her a hint or two about her future husband ; 
I’m sure no one could know him better 
than I do. No doubt she is one of those 
artful little dolls who will annoy him until 
every nerve of his musical soul is on end, 
and he has to give up composing ; and what 
will posterity do then ? ” 

Mr. Reginald Routh, who never did any- 
thing but sign blank checks when he was 
told, was sent about town to buy the most 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 129 

expensive dessert service he could find ; 
and when he brought back specimens to his 
invalid wife of choice plates with floral de- 
signs, he was sent out again to hunt for 
more suitable patterns, until the search 
ended, as his wife had intended it should, 
in a whole set being ordered from Paris, cost- 
ing a guinea a plate, and decorated with a 
dainty design of pink cupids playing trum- 
pets and harps in impossible positions. 

The Raleighs, as a family, were glad. 
Owing to Norah’s intervention the subject 
of Digby’s first marriage was allowed to be 
mentioned, and a new toy was brought to 
the old manor in the shape of his four-year 
old son ; and as the Squire was not asked 
to support the child, and as he learned 
furthermore that Digby’s new wife would 
bring him money, he raised no objection to 
his marrying again, and allowed himself 
meanwhile to be completely enslaved by 
the tyrannical Sonny. The musician’s sis- 
ters regarded Norah with the feelings of 
most sisters, excepting the most callous; 


130 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 


that is, they wrote affectionately to her, 
with smiles on their lips and murder at 
their hearts, and they received affectionate 
letters in reply, which they declared they 
could see through ; ” they were angry 
with every one who did not approve of the 
match, and they told one another gloomily 
that she was sure to be designing ; ” they 
drew out long descriptions of his intended 
bride from the musician, and they only 
smiled when he told them that they would 
not like her at first, because she was so 
very different from all their friends. Lady 
Raleigh, who had always expected her 
eldest son to marry an opera singer or an 
actress, openly showed her relief at his 
engagement to an ordinary gentleman’s 
daughter, who did not play or sing and 
had no particular talent for anything, who 
had never wished to be independent and to 
leave her home, and who went to church on 
Sunday morning with as much sense of 
duty and enjoyment as she bestowed on her 
breakfast. 


AT THE RELTOJ^ ARMS. 


131 


And when Norah came to stay at Mur- 
ville Manor, the impression she made was 
so pleasing that even the suspicious Digby 
had to acknowledge his engagement was at 
last going right. The Squire liked her be- 
cause she never complained when he took 
her over the biggest duckery in the village, 
and because she read the whole of his 
pamphlet called How to make <£50 a 
year out of ducks,” without disagreeing 
with it. Lady Raleigh liked her because 
she had always said she would ; besides, 
Norah agreed that England was the only 
place for Jack. The boys said she “ was n’t 
bad, but wanted backing up at times,” 
which was a kindly criticism considering 
their bitter disappointment at not having 
Lady Joan for their sister-in-law. The 
girls fell in love with her because they 
could not help it; and their old nurse 
grudgingly allowed that she could n’t 
have been nicer brought up, not if she had 
been your mamma’s own child.” There was 
something exemplary about Nora which 


132 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 


always made her do the thing that was 
expected of her at the right moment. She 
never had a headache when the boys 
wanted her to romp with them, she did 
not hurt the children’s feelings by speaking 
French before them, she always wanted 
music when Helen was going to sing, and 
she did not obtrude her affection for the 
family hero in public. Perhaps this last, 
evidence of good breeding had more weight 
with the Raleighs than anything else she 
did. 

Shortly before the marriage there was a 
monster reception in the studio in the West 
End. All the lady pupils lined the walls, 
and examined critically the names on the 
wedding presents, and wondered enviously 
where Norah bought her hats, and manoeu- 
vred anxiously for a few words with the 
musician. Mrs. Reginald Routh, in con- 
sideration of her being an invalid, sat in the 
most comfortable chair in the room, while 
Lady Raleigh,* on the edge of an extremely 
straight-backed one, had to listen to her 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 133 

eulogies of Mr. Digby’s music and Mr. 
Digby himself. The bride-elect as usual 
played her part excellently ; she made her 
way through the toast-racks, and the plated 
spoons in pale-blue cases, and the pepper- 
pots, and the clocks with the musical 
devices, which were spread out on little 
tables all over the room ; and she said a few 
gracious words to each lady pupil, in which 
she thanked her for her particular toast- 
rack or case of spoons, and hoped she would 
call after the marriage on the musician and 
herself in their flat in Victoria Street. And 
sheL ended her circuit of the room, as was, 
inevitable, beside the throne of Mrs. Regi- 
nald Routh, where she relieved Lady 
Raleigh for a time, and whence she was, 
from a quick survey of the attitude of every 
one present, that there was little chance of 
being relieved herself at all. 

^^This is the happiest moment of my 
life,” murmured Mrs. Reginald, with a 
tremor in her voice ; you will excuse my 
foolish tears, will you not ? He has been 


134 AT THE BELTON ARMS. 

like a dear brother, an elder brother, to me 
ever since I have known him, and it is 
natural that I should have the jealous feel- 
ing of a sister in seeing him belong to 
another. It is only at first, of course — 
dear me ! what a terrible tyrant deep affec- 
tion is, to be sure ! Don’t mind me dear, I 
shall be better directly ; ” and she applied a 
lace handkerchief to a perfectly dry eye, 
and followed the passage of the musician 
among the wedding presents with the 
other. 

« Why, there is that forward person who 
used to throw herself at Mr. Digby’s head 
last season,’^ she continued, recovering with 
rapidity, Lady something or another, — 
came into the title by a fluke, I believe. Who 
is the handsome fellow she is flirting with 
now, eh ? So that ’s Jack Raleigh, is it ? 
Oh ! I ’ve heard about him. Not at all 
like his brother, is he ? ” 

He ’s very nice,” said Norah, gently. 

Nice, is he ? Then he does n’t know 
what he ’s got hold of in that young woman. 


AT THE BELTON ASMS. 


135 


I suppose she thinks as she can’t get one, 
she ’ll have the other. Have you been in- 
troduced to her, my dear ? ” 

^^Yes — I have. That is, I — I stayed 
with her — for a night.” 

1 ’m not surprised at that. She wants 
to know you after your marriage, my dear. 
That is where you will feel your inexpe- 
rience, when these designing clever women 
come and play upon your ignorance in 
order to get at your husband. You will 
feel the want of some nice sensible married 
woman, not too old, who has been through 
it all, and can help you to see through 
them. I ’ve no patience with these women 
who won’t have husbands of their own, but 
must needs go running after other people’s. 
Ah-h, Mr. Digby, is it really true that we are 
to hear the last movement of the trio this 
afternoon ? How quite too lovely ! ” 

The musician cleverly introduced his 
father to her at this point, and hastened off 
to the piano ; and Sir Marcus, who had not 
been enjoying himself at all in a circle 


136 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 


whose interests were not his own^ settled 
himself down to a denunciation of town 
life, which necessarily led him on to the 
allotment question ; and Mrs. Keginald 
Routh for the first time in her life found 
she had met her match. 

You he feeling played out, are n’t 
you ? ” Jack Raleigh was saying to his 
companion while the instruments were 
being tuned. 

Oh, no, only bored to death. I wonder 
which is the worst, to be married or musi- 
cal ? But both at once — poor Mr- 
Raleigh ! ” 

Jack broke into a laugh, which was 
hardly warranted by the smallness of the 
joke ; and as the first chord was struck on 
the piano simultaneously, Lady Joan’s re- 
putation was not improved among the dis- 
turbed audience by the circumstance. At 
any other time she would have enjoyed the 
shocked glances that were thrown in her 
direction ; but this afternoon she was feel- 
ing too cross to be perverse, and she hardly 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 137 

waited for the end of the trio to take leave 
of the smiling host. 

So you he off already ? I knew you 
were played out/' said Jack, whose vocabu- 
lary, like his perception, was limited ; shall 
I let fly for a hansom ? ” 

Oh, no ; did n't I tell you before that 
I had the carriage ? " answered Lady Joan, 
impatiently, though she realized the futility 
of censuring an offender who was always 
blind to his offence. And I can see 
myself out, thank you." 

But — you will let me come with you ? 
It 's beastly foggy out, and something might 
easily happen, don't you know. You said 
you had n't brought the man along, and I 'd 
sooner see you through, 'pon my honor I 
would. I won’t bother, I won’t really, don't 
you know, and you can fire me at the next 
block if I 'm in the way. That 's straight, 
is n't it ? " 

In spite of the American drawl, there 
was something familiar in the pleading 
tones of his voice that reminded her un- 


138 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 


pleasantly of an incident she had been 
trying to forget, and she would have curtly 
refused his offer had she not found the pale 
eyes of Mrs. Reginald Routh fixed inquir- 
ingly upon her. 

If you like, I shall be delighted,'’ she 
said, with a sudden show of graciousness 
that both pleased and surprised him ; you 
will see if the brougham is there ? Good- 
bye, Mrs. Routh ; so glad to see you looking 
so well. I suppose I can’t give you a lift ? 
Auf Wiedersehen, Norah ; shall expect you 
both to lunch to-morrow ; don’t forget. 
What detestable weather it is ; I shall go 
and vegetate at Relton if this fog goes on. 
Is it there, Mr. Jack? Oh, thanks very 
much.” 

In the brougham, she leaned back and 
closed her eyes, and wished the fog did not 
make them smart, and that she had man- 
aged to evade her companion after all, in 
spite of the exquisite annoyance he had 
enabled her to inflict on Mrs. Reginald. 
But Jack guessed nothing of her thoughts. 


AT THE HELTON ARMS. 139 

and plodded on with his own instead, which 
all related to her and to a certain desire 
that filled his mind at that moment ; he 
could only think about one thing at a time. 

I say, you — you did n’t rightly mean 
what you said just now, did you?” he 
began slowly, as they stopped in the Circus 
in a dead block of omnibuses and traffic. 

What did I say ? I ’ve forgotten long 
ago. You promised not to bother,” re- 
turned Lady Joan, shortly, which was not 
encouraging. 

But Jack was not easily snubbed. 

You said that marriage was tommy rot, 
don’t you know,” he pursued steadily. 

She opened her eyes wide and stared at 
him. 

I did n’t say so. But it is. Why ?” 

Oh, well, you know, because I don’t 
think it is exactly. At least I mean I 
don’t see why it should be, don’t you 
know.” 

“ Then perhaps it is n’t. It does n’t mat- 
ter, does it ? Oh, why don’t we go on ?” 


140 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 


I say, how jolly smart you are to-day,” 
he said crossly, and dropped the drawl. 

Why ? Because I don’t wish to discuss 
the marriage question ? I am so sick of it. 
If that is all you want, go and read Bjdrn- 
son and all the others. Modern fiction is 
crammed with it, so is the modern drama. 
Your brother can lend you crowds of books 
about the marriage question — he won’t 
want them for a year or two.” She ended 
with a little hard laugh. 

“ You know I don’t care a hang for the 
marriage question,” he said sulkily. 

No more do I,” she said cheerfully, so 
we 11 let it drop. I am so glad you are not 
modern. Do you know, the first night I 
saw you — ” 

Yes?” he said eagerly, as she stopped. 
It is a sure sign of comradeship when two 
people begin comparing notes about their 
first meeting. 

Oh,” she continued carelessly, I only 
felt relieved that you had no views and no 
ideas, and didn’t want a revolution like 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 141 

your brother, and never fell in love with 
people. It made you so nice to flirt with, 
that was all. Thank Heaven, we are going 
on again at last.” 

Jack only hated the policeman for letting 
them pass ; the fog was lifting in Oxford 
Street, and they were rolling along quickly 
in the direction of Pont Street ; there was 
no time to be lost. 

^^Do listen seriously for once,” he sug- 
gested ; why should n’t marriage between 
two fellows — ” 

I thought we had agreed to let it drop,” 
she interrupted impatiently. 

But it is n’t the marriage question. 
It — it’s marriage itself,” he cried desper- 
ately, and then held his breath. 

They had turned down Park Lane into 
the yellow darkness again, and the two in 
the brougham could not even see each 
other’s features. Outside, the policemen 
were shouting directions ; within the car- 
riage, Lady Joan was leaning back far in 
her corner, and thinking swiftly. Was this 


142 AT THE RELTON ARMS. 

to be the solution of all that had been puz* 
zling her this afternoon ? It was not 
often that Lady Joan was depressed ; but 
when she was, a yellow fog was not more 
gloomy than her mood. 

Don’t you see how I ’ve loved you all 
the time ? It ’s not my form to gas like 
Digby, and I suppose I ’m a bally idiot, 
because the guvnor always says I am, and 
of course I have n’t any oof ; so it ’s all con- 
founded cheek on my part, it is really, don’t 
you know. But — you said you hated to 
be married, so why should n’t we be en- 
gaged, just enough to stop people from 
talking, don’t you know, so that we could 
belong, sort of ; do you twig ? I ’d give you 
my word of honor to go back to the States, 
and work like a nigger till — till you sent 
for me again. That would n’t bother you, 
and it might be rather jolly, don’t you 
know. And that’s all there is to it.” 

She was still silent. If he had known 
that she was comparing his proposal with 
the one she had had in the summer, and 


AT THE EELTON ARMS. 143 

calculating how much happiness and com- 
fort she was likely to get out of his roman- 
tic attachment to her, his ideal of her might 
have received a shock. But for the sake 
of ideals some thoughts are allowed to go 
unread ; and he only noticed that she 
moved a little out of her corner, and he at 
once drew nearer to her. 

do love you, dear,’’ he said tremu- 
lously, and ventured to lay his broad palm 
on hers ; don’t you think — we might — ” 
One of the blind impulses came to him 
which were his making and his ruin. Lady 
Joan would have loathed him at that 
moment if he had done anything common- 
place, or waited for her to take the initiative. 
But he put his arm round her waist so 
softly that she scarcely felt it. 

May I kiss you ? ” he whispered. 


CHAPTER YIII. 


Two years later, the musician and his wife 
went down to Relton for their Easter holi- 
day. They stayed at the Relton Arms,” 
although they had a warm invitation to 
the Court instead ; but Digby was unusu- 
ally firm in his determination not to be 
the guest of Lady Joan, and Norah’s ob- 
jections that there was no nursery for the 
baby, and that people would wonder,” 
were for once overruled. She satisfied her 
sense of the fitness of things by telling Mrs. 
Reginald Routh and her set that there were 
early romantic associations in connection 
with the little old country inn which in- 
duced her and her husband to go there 
again ; and to people who spent their lives 
in straining after unconventional effects with 
a conventional reason for them in the back- 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 


145 


ground in case it was wanted, the expla- 
nation was quite sufficient. But the fact 
remained that the “ Relton Arms ’’ offered 
insufficient accommodation for a baby and 
a growing boy and a nurse, and there 
were jars in that holiday in consequence. 

“ This is what I like,'' exclaimed the 
musician, enthusiastically, at breakfast, the 
morning after their arrival : fresh eggs 
and milk straight from the cow — the — 
the animal I mean, none of your cooked- 
up stuff such as we 've been eating in Vic- 
toria Street. I can’t think why you don't 
have it straight up from here, Norah, in- 
stead of — " 

Because you said the eggs at the Stores 
were just as good, dear, and they are cheaper ; 
don’t you remember ? " said his wife, gently. 
Digby wished, not for the first time, that 
her memory were less reliable. 

^^Well, at any rate, the milk is a dif- 
ferent thing ; just look at the cream on it. 
Baby ought to thrive on stuff like that, 
ought n’t she ? " 


10 


146 


AT THE EELTON ARMS. 


“ That is just what I am anxious about ; 
it has only upset her so far. Hark ! is that 
baby crying ? Precious thing ! Do you 
mind managing Sonny's egg and pouring 
out the coffee, Digby, while I run upstairs ? " 

I am inclined to agree with Plato,” 
began the musician, earnestly ; but his wife 
was gone, and Sonny was clamoring for 
food. He took up an egg, and then almost 
dropped it again as the wooden door was 
pushed open from without, with the same 
creak as of yore. 

Auntie Joan, Auntie Joan,” shrieked 
Sonny, tumbling off his high-chair with a 
clatter, and dragging the tablecloth with 
a medley of spoons and knives after him. 
The musician was thankful for the diver- 
sion at that moment, and forebore to swear 
as he set his son on his feet again, and held 
out his hand with a smile to Lady Joan. 
She was in her riding-habit, and he told 
himself that she looked like Diana, or any 
other goddess that represents the woman a 
man admires. 


AT THE BELTON ARMS. 147 

“ Well ? ’’ she said, with her fresh, breezy 
laugh, how soon will you be tired of pick- 
nicking and ready to come to terms ? And 
where ’s Norah ? 

Upstairs. There ’s a draught under the 
bedroom door, and Mrs. Haxtell has quar- 
relled violently with nurse. Baby cries 
perpetually — teeth. And I can’t get any 
breakfast. That ’s all so far, I think ; ” and 
he laughed as heartily as she, and they 
bumped their heads together under the 
table in picking up the fallen utensils, 
and came up again with red faces just 
as Norah returned with the baby in her 
arms. 

^^Oh, is it you, Joan? So glad to see 
you, dear ; sit down and have some break- 
fast. Why haven’t you poured out the 
coffee, Digby ? How helpless men are ! 
Take baby a minute, will you ? There, you 
have set her off again, just when I had 
quieted her. She has taken cold in the 
night, that ’s what it is. Hush, hush ! 
There then, it sha’n’t, that it sha’n’t ! ” 


148 


AT THE KELTON ARMS. 


After all/’ began the musician in a mo- 
mentary lull, I do think Plato — ” 

Will you give Digby something to eat, 
Joan, dear ? ” interposed Norah gently ; and 
peace presently pervaded the breakfast-table. 

^^The lambs is fat, isn’t they, daddy?” 
asked Sonny, from the window-seat. How 
does the lambs know, daddy, which sheep 
is their right mother ? ” 

Confound his precocity,” grumbled the 
musician ; what is one to do with a son 
like that? Besides, I can’t tell him my- 
self : how do they know ? ” 

They don’t,” said Lady Joan, promptly ; 
it ’s a fact I used to dispute with my gov- 
erness in my youth. It is only we who 
take it upon ourselves to say that they do ; 
we have no means of proving it. The sheep 
takes them as they come, and looks equally 
bored with them all.” 

Digby laughed loudly, and Norah mur- 
mured something in a pained voice about 
maternal instinct. 

All nonsense, my dear,” persisted Lady- 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 149 

Joan, gayly ; no amount of maternal in- 
stinct could help a sheep to tell her own 
lamb from any other sheep s lamb. Be- 
sides, why should she want to ? As it is, 
she can have a change without being called 
fickle. Happy sheep ! 

Sonny was standing with his legs very 
wide apart and his blue eyes fixed on her 
face, as she said this. 

Auntie Joan 's portending,” he said sol- 
emnly. The others laughed, which awoke 
the slumbering baby again ; and Norah, 
after complaining between its wails that 
the draught under the bedroom door was 
answerable for everything, carried it up- 
stairs again by way of curing it. 

Well, what is it?” said the musician, 
in the peace that ensued on his wife’s de- 
parture ; and he lighted his cigarette and 
looked across at Lady Joan. 

^^How did you know there was any- 
thing?” she asked. 

I always know,” he said, in a superior 
tone; ‘^we haven’t been chums all these 


150 AT THE KELTON ARMS. 

years for nothing. Tell me what^s np, 
dear. Hasn’t Jack been writing to you, 
the scamp ? ” 

‘^Oh, yes. He always writes. He is 
quite good. I am the naughty one ; I al- 
ways have been, I think. I am not fit to 
be engaged ; it is true what I told you — 
that day.” 

They were very fond of making allusions 
to that day ; they told themselves it was 
one of the privileges of their friendship, 
now that she was safely engaged and he was 
securely married, to mention subjects which 
were not always even respectable; it did 
not occur to them that this constant re- 
newal of back chapters in their lives had 
more to do with their egoism than their 
friendship. 

And what dreadful thing have you been 
doing now, please ? ” asked Digby. 

She flung back her head and laughed 
mockingly, as she used to do. 

Do you remember telling me that mar- 
riage was the only way out of it ? I am 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 


151 


half inclined to agree with you now, though 
I wrote to Jack yesterday to break ofE our 
engagement. That is all.” 

Sonny hummed his baby ditty on the 
window-seat, without interruption, for a 
few seconds. 

Then the musician laid down his cigar- 
ette. 

You — did — that ? ” he said, drawing 
a long breath ; what a wonderful creature 
you are, Joan ! ’’ 

Only wonderful ? ” she said lightly ; 
are you sure you don’t mean heartless ? ” 

Why did you do it ? Do stop laugh- 
ing,” he urged her. Her eyes flashed 
angrily. 

What do you mean ? ” she cried ; “ do 
you think I am heartless ? ” 

Surely not,” said the musician, looking 
along his cigarette, and avoiding her direct 
glance across the breakfast-table. 

Then why do you say I am ? ” 

I — I did n’t say so, if you remember, 
Joan. The word entirely originated 
with — ” 


152 AT THE RELTON ARMS. 

Oh, I know,” she interrupted impa- 
tiently ; but why don’t you think so ? 
You ought to — everybody does — Norah 
would.” 

Norah is n’t — Norah can’t understand 
— that is, Norah does not know you so 
well as I do, and she is a little prejudiced 
sometimes — ” stumbled the musician. 

Just so, yes,” said Lady Joan, gravely, 
and there was a pause. 

Then you agree with me that I have 
done the best thing under the circum- 
stances, the miserable circumstances ? ” she 
began again in a few moments. 

I always agree with you,” said the mu- 
sician ; but you must own that — not 
knowing the circumstances which — which 
led to your course of action, it — it becomes 
difficult — ” 

He yielded to a nervous desire to laugh 
instead of finishing his sentence ; and Lady 
Joan, after a desperate effort to lose her 
temper, weakly followed his example. 

Tell me why you did it,” he said more 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 153 

naturally when they were grave again, and 
he walked round the table and leaned over 
the back of her chair. She fell into the 
role of the penitent child. 

I could n’t help it, it came over me 
yesterday that I could n’t stand it any 
longer. I ’ve always said perpetual en- 
gagements would not answer, because peo- 
ple could never stand the awful monotony 
of them. It is only the monotony of Jack’s 
love for me that has exhausted my patience 
now. If he had really been at all wild 
after we were engaged, which every one 
was so fond of prophesying to me, I think 
I might have got to love him too much to 
give him up. But — oh ! it is the badness 
in me I think, Digby. Why don’t you 
scold me instead of looking at me like 
that ? ” 

He stroked her hair idly without speak- 
ing, and she had to laugh again to hide the 
tremor in her lips. 

I always told you I wanted our engage- 
ment kept secret ; it would have been much 


154 AT THE RELTON ARMS. 

better. It was an experiment, rather a 
disastrous one for Jack — ’’ 

And for you ? 

— and it should never have been made 
public. Engagements never ought to be 
made public, and if they were what they 
claim to be they never would be. It is 
because they are such miserable, heartless 
arrangements that we have to take refuge 
in the approbation of society to make them 
a success at all ; if it were not for the con- 
nivance of their friends I don’t believe peo- 
ple would ever get to the marriage service 
at all. No wonder men say such hard 
things about women ; we simply destroy all 
the sentiment that is in them by our eager- 
ness to cash it at once, and then we go 
in for a cheap cynicism and call them 
heartless brutes. If I were a man I would 
never ask a woman to be my wife, never, 
never, never ! At least, not if I were in 
love with her.” 

She spoke rapidly and vehemently, and 
the musician framed her face in his hands 
and coughed a little to steady his voice. 


AT THE HELTON ARMS. 155 

Poor Jack 1 ’’ he said almost inaudibly. 

Why do you say that ? ” she asked, in 
the same tone. 

^‘Because he might have married you, 
and he has just missed it,” he breathed in 
reply ; and their heads drew closer together 
and remained so for a few seconds. They 
had had enough in their two lives to make 
them either sure friends or enemies. And 
morality is mainly a question of circum- 
stance, and largely dependent on the chances 
of detection. 

Why are you so good to me ? ” she 
asked. 

^^Am I?” he said with a smile, and he 
removed one of his hands to brush off the 
ash of his cigarette. I am only what 
you make me. I have always been in your 
hands, you know.” 

Rubbish!” she said, and laughed un- 
naturally, and freed herself from his touch 
and walked away to the window. Norah’s 
voice came from the orchard, calling him, 
and he went out through the door. Lady 


156 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 


Joan sat on the window ledge and thought 
over what he had been saying, and then 
about the words of her letter to Jack, and 
then that it was time to walk back to the 
Court and speak about the mending of a 
certain fence to the man. And finally she 
thought about nothing at all as she yielded 
to the drowsiness of the hot spring morn- 
ing, and rested her cheek against a back- 
ground of green creepers and became con- 
scious of nothing but a confused medley of 
well-known sounds, — the loud ticking of 
the clock in the way trifles assert their im- 
portance after an event, the tuneless hum- 
ming of the child on the floor, the warning 
bell of the postman’s bicycle as he came 
round the corner of the street, and the 
splash of the ducks he frightened into the 
pond as he came. Then she raised her 
heavy eyelids, and saw the musician look- 
ing at her with a strange, frightened ex- 
pression on his face. 

^^Yes?” she said quickly, with a tight 
feeling at her breast. 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 


157 


He had a telegram in his hand. 

“ Joan, dear, can you bear to hear some- 
thing ? I — I know I am a weak fool, hut 
some one must tell you, and Norah won’t, 
and I would sooner die than give you any 
pain, but — Joan — ” 

His agitation and her own anxiety 
almost made her hate him. 

‘^Tell me what there is to tell,” she 
cried fiercely, and snatched at the telegram, 
and then recoiled from it as it fluttered 
away on the floor. 

No, don’t ! ” she said the instant after, 
I think I know it. Jack — ” 

Yes, dear. That is it. Jack will 
never — Jack will never have your letter,” 
and the musician put out his hand to her. 
She did not take it, nor heed him. 

It was a railwa}" accident — they have 
not cabled much,” he faltered ; but she did 
not help him by a word or a look, and they 
stood silent for an interminable minute. 

Then she spoke through her dry lips 
with a little forced laugh. 


158 AT THE RELTON ARMS. 

What a pity I did not wait for the next 
mail/’ she said ; what a character for 
constancy I might have had ! ” 

He had just time to put out his arm to 
catch her as she fell suddenly forward. 

^^It is extraodinary how quietly Joan 
has taken it/’ Norah said on the evening 
of the same day. I often wonder if she 
does feel things as we do, or whether Mrs. 
Eeginald Routh is not right about her after 
all. You know, she always did say that 
Joan’s hatred of music meant a lack of 
heart ; of course, that is putting it rather 
strongly, and I should n’t call her heart- 
less myself — because nobody is quite 
that ; but still, she has been strangely cool 
about poor Jack, and she has not even 
mentioned the mourning. I should not be 
surprised if she did not wear black at all, 
she is so inclined to be eccentric. I am 
glad I wrote to Peter Robinson’s in time 
for the post; I shall get the patterns to- 
morrow. I don’t know when I have felt 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 159 

SO upset, though of course it does not do to 
talk about it. I wish there were a piano 
here ; it would do us both so much good, 
wouldn't it, dear ? " 

Digby looked at his wife's gentle face as 
she bent it over her needlework, and he 
counted the regular folds of her soft gray 
gown and the coils of brown hair round her 
head, and he made a few mental reflections 
on the marvellous nature of woman. 

I cannot conceive what it must be to 
live without the love of music,” she went 
on unconsciously in her low tuneful voice. 

Music is like religion in that way, I 
think ; we may try to do without it when 
we are happy, but we want it terribly when 
the trials come. Now, what has Joan to 
fall back upon to-night, do you suppose ? " 
I don’t know, but I will go and see,” 
muttered the musician ; he felt he had had 
as much as he could stand just then, and he 
took up his straw hat significantly. The 
old brown felt one had been gently but 
firmly suppressed soon after his marriage. 


160 AT THE RELTOH ARMS. 

What was that you said, Digby ? 

I will go and make her come down 
here to be cheered up. You are too tired 
to come, eh, childie ? said Digby ; and he 
kissed her before he pushed open the 
creaking door and went out into the 
moonlight. 

The butler said Lady Joan was busy in 
her boudoir and wished to be left undis- 
turbed. But Digby managed to gain ad- 
mittance a few minutes later, and he found 
occasion to add a few more reflections to 
his mental synopsis of woman. 

^^How nice of you to come, and what a 
cold creature you are ! Come and sit near 
the fire ; I waged a war with Mrs. Binks 
and had a wood fire lighted because I felt 
chilly, which shocked the conventional old 
thing very much indeed, because there 
never has been a fire lighted in here be- 
tween spring-cleaning and Michaelmas, 
since the memory of man. But why should 
I listen to Mrs. Binks or any one else if I 
don’t choose ? At all events, it is nice and 


AT THE RELTOlSr ARMS. 


161 


cosey, and I am going to tell you all my 
ideas. But tell me first why you came. 
What are you laughing at ? ” 

She looked up at him sharply from the 
hearthrug where she had flung herself 
down to stir the fire, and he stroked his 
moustache hurriedly. 

am not laughing, Joan. I came to 
take you back to Norah — to be cheered 
up.” ■ 

^^Oh. It was very kind of you — both. 
How is the baby ? ” said she, turning a log 
dexterously over on its side and making 
the sparks fly up the chimney and send a 
red glow over her face. 

^^The baby is — ah — quiescent. Mrs. 
Haxtell is not. I think on the whole you 
had better not go there for amusement. 
My family affairs are only funny from the 
outside just at present. I think you had 
better give me your new ideas instead. 
What have you been thinking about all 
day?” 

That is what I am going to tell you.” 

11 


162 AT THE EELTON ARMS. 

She stood up and leaned against the 
mantelshelf, and looked over his head at 
the bookshelves on the wall. First of 

all, I hated myself for a whole hour. I 
thought I had got outside myself and was 
looking at myself like — oh, like another 
woman would look at me, Norah for in- 
stance. And I did n’t enjoy myself for 
that hour at all. I almost made up my 
mind to go abroad again ; but it was lunch- 
time, and over the mayonnaise, which was 
particularly good to-day, I came to the 
conclusion that it was like running away, 
and everybody would say I had gone ^ to 
get over it,’ and I could not tolerate that 
for a moment, could I?” 

^^Of course not, no. I know I may 
smoke, may n’t I ? And then ? ” 

^^Then — ” she made an effort not to 
alter her voice, and exaggerated its pitch 
in the attempt, oh, then it became very 
apparent from the attitude of all the ser- 
vants that they had heard the news about 
— Jack. That is to say, Thomas spoke 


AT THE EELTON ARMS. 163 

to me in a whisper at lunch, and never 
handed me anything twice, and the coach- 
man never sent up for orders at all, and I 
only just stopped the maids in time from 
pulling down all the blinds, and Mrs. Binks 
has been drinking tea in the servants' hall 
in her black silk dress ever since three 
o’clock, and did not answer my bell until I 
rang the second time, and then she appeared 
with a clean handkerchief in her hand, and 
a face as long as a fiddle. Are n’t servants 
fond of a tragedy ? And am I very heart- 
less to notice all these things, Bigby ? ” 

“ Heartless ? No,” he said with empha- 
sis, remembering what his wife had said in 
the inn ; and after lunch, please ? ” 

Oh, after lunch I went to sleep. And 
when I woke up I felt better. I was able 
to think without getting sentimental over 
it. Don’t you see, it is like this. There 
isn’t anybody.” 

I don’t understand,” said the musician. 

I could hardly expect you to,” she said 
dryly ; there is somebody for you. But 


164 


AT THE KELTOJq- ARMS. 


for me there is nobody, and I am getting 
old, and I feel frightened sometimes. Re- 
member, that is an admission. I don’t 
know why I am telling you all this, because 
I want to get to the end. At all events, I 
had a sort of sensation that I had tried 
more than most women to gain something, 
and I had hopelessly missed it ; so it was 
time to turn round and do something, as I 
should have to go on living all the same. 
Now, there were two courses open to me : 
one was to turn the literary cynic and write 
a novel in which I could vent my spite 
against my own particular Fate by personi- 
fying myself in an ill-used heroine, who 
talks epigrams from the moment she gets 
out of bed in the morning, and who loves 
to assure her men acquaintances that they 
may mention questionable topics before her 
if they like. And the other was to repent 
and do good works, and become the fash- 
ionable philanthropist, and tell the poor 
and fatherless that they have got to be 
improved in their condition whether they 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 


165 


think they want improving or not. Guess 
which I chose ! Oh, I do wonder if you 
will guess right ; ’’ and she dropped on her 
knees beside him and looked into his face. 

If you vrere any ordinary clever woman, 
I should guess the first; but — ” he paused 
and looked at the eager, scornful face, and 
smiled to himself, no, that would n’t do 
for you, Joan. And yet, neither would the 
other. I can’t imagine you walking through 
the village in awful, hideous garments, 
carying a rice pudding and a Bible. Oh, 
Joan, surely yo?/ are not going in for that 
self-indulgent bosh known as charity?” 

“ That is where you are so like a man ! ” 
She flung herself away from him, and 
began walking about the room and talking 
quickly. You are right about the novel, 
yes. You see, if I were to write a book 
it would be so frightfully personal that I 
should have to take a pseudonym to begin 
with. And where is the satisfaction of 
jeering at your friends when they don’t 
know you are doing it ? But I don’t know 


166 AT THE KELTON ARMS. 

why you should take up the old, played-out 
notion of charity as the only alternative. 
Who wants to go about with Bibles and rice 
puddings ? Nous avons change tout cela, 
raon ami ! Why, there is no such thing as 
charity left now ; have n’t you learnt that 
from Sir Marcus ? It is philanthropy now- 
adays, my good sir, equally self-indulgent, 
of course, but more modern and ten times 
more entertaining. The Bible never need 
come in at all, and no one sees the rice 
puddings, they ^ re all managed by commit- 
tees ; all you have to do is to lend your 
name for the circulars of the league, and 
hold meetings over afternoon tea in your 
drawing-room, and talk. That is all. Now 
do you see what I mean ? ” 

gather that you mean to take up 
philanthropy as a new form of diversion ; 
but I am afraid I do not quite recognize 
the full advantages of the scheme. I don’t 
see — ” 

Of course you don’t,” cried Lady Joan, 
cheerfully, you have no cause to see. 1 


AT THE KELT ON ARMS. 167 

don’t see the full advantages of married 
life, for instance. But I am really going to 
be serious now, so don’t interrupt. In the 
first place, I am not going to be philan- 
thropic in the country; that only means 
being hopelessly under the thumb of one’s 
rector, or hopelessly at variance with him ; 
besides, it is so mortally dull, and — I don’t 
mean to be dull just now. So I am going 
up to Pont Street in October, and I shall 
organize a regular philanthropic campaign. 
Oh, I am going to have a fine time! I 
shall sing for concerts in the EastEnd, I 
shall paint match-boxes and gridirons and 
send them to fancy fairs, I shall play with 
the children in the hospitals, and teach the 
children of Whitechapel — thank Heaven! 
no amount of philanthropy can ever spoil 
the children — I shall even give sumptuous 
receptions, at which we shall discuss the 
evils of the sweating-system and the possi- 
bility of distributing certain portions of 
bread and soup to the deserving poor dur- 
ing the cold weather. Who knows that I 


168 AT THE EELTON AEMS. 

may not speak on a platform before long ? 
There is always the bearing-rein to fall 
back upon, if all the others fail ; or the 
prevention of cruelty to birds, now that 
wearing feathers is out of fashion ; or com- 
pulsory vaccination, or hygiene and rational 
dress and other horrors which are so excel- 
lent for the poor. Think of my reputation, 
Digby ! It will be so assured that even 
Mrs. Reginald Routh will not dare to cast a 
stone at me, and I shall be able to say just 
what I choose about miyhody. Why, philan- 
thropy, properly managed, is as telling as 
music! Won’t it be glorious fun, Digby? 
Hey-day, what a noise I am making 1 ” 

He got up and stirred the logs in the 
low grate with his foot. She was lying on 
the sofa, looking at him. 

^^Well, have you nothing to say to my 
beautiful idea ? ” she asked presently. 

The musician gulped at something in his 
throat. 

It is surprising,” he began, with an at- 
tempt at his old impressive manner, how 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 169 

difficult it is to make ourselves understood, 
especially in our most intimate relations.” 

“ What are you talking about ? ” said 
Lady Joan. 

I mean,” went on the musician, desper- 
ately, that I don’t know how to tell you 
all that is in my mind, dear. Perhaps it is 
best left unsaid. I don’t know ; but — 
when you ask me what I think of it, I can 
only feel that it is all sad, dreadfully sad. 
I ’m afraid I have not made it very clear, 
have I?” 

She moved her feet, and he came and sat 
down on the end of the sofa. 

“ Tell me what it is that is sad,” she 
asked, shading her eyes with her hand. 

What you have been saying, that there 
is n’t anybody,” he said, and boldly moved 
the hand, and held it fast, and looked into 
her eyes. 

^^No more there is, — except you,” she 
answered recklessly, and looked back at 
him for a moment. 

Something surged up to his lips in the 


170 AT THE EELTON ARMS. 

silence of the next few minutes, and he 
held his breath and tightened his grasp on 
the cold fingers before he said it. Then 
she pulled away her hand almost roughly, 
and spoke quickly. 

Do you know it is nearly eleven ? 
Norah had a bad night with the baby last 
night, and you look awfully tired too. 
Had n’t you better be moving ? ” 

So he did not say it after all. 

You have not told me what you think 
yet. I suppose you are only laughing at 
me,” she said, when he bade her good-bye. 

He found himself smiling in a conven- 
tional manner ; he could not have said 
why. 

Oh, no, why should I ? I think it is 
very wise of you,” he said, opening the 
door to go out ; and when I tell Norah 
she will say ^Just like Joan!’ Good- 
night.” 

And she answered down the stairs after 
him, Good-night, and mind you tell Norah 
all about it 1 ” 


AT THE HELTON ARMS. 171 

‘‘ T ’ll be hanged if I do,” thought the 
musician, as he walked down the drive ; and 
he congratulated himself all the way back 
on not having made a fool of himself. 

I ’m sure I hope he won’t,” added Lady 
Joan to herself out loud, as the front-door 
banged. Then she walked unsteadily into 
her boudoir, and made up the fire, and sat 
down on the sofa, and looked dully into 
the flames. And presently she turned and 
hid her face in the cushions, and burst into 
tears. 


CHAPTER IX. 


Lady Joan went up to her town house at 
the end of the summer, but her philanthro- 
pic campaign was not a success. The field 
of philanthropy was overcrowded just then 
with people like herself, who had too little 
wealth and too much energy to be of any 
practical use to the great organizers of 
charity, who never wanted anything from 
their devotees but subscriptions and obedi- 
ence ; a reformer does not want to be inter- 
fered with by a penniless nobody who has 
independent views concerning his method 
of reform. And Lady Joan soon found 
that she was not in a set that troubled 
itself much about the suffering poor. The 
people she met in Digby’s studio were 
mostly theoretical Socialists, w^ho complained 
that the cause of Socialism was being 


AT THE BELTON ARMS. 


173 


ruined by the enthusiasts who tried to 
make it work before its principles had been 
properly disseminated among the people ; 
and amongst her other friends were some 
who had a small and private charity of 
their own, but were so jealous of it when 
they had that she found it impossible to 
work with them ; or else they were quite 
willing to use her house and her carriage 
and her time, if she would meekly give 
them all these without being allowed a 
voice in the arrangements or a particle of 
credit for what she did. And she found 
that as much sweating went on in the ad- 
ministration of charity as its administrators 
were in the habit of exposing in the slums ; 
she met jaded gentlewomen in the employ 
of philanthropists, who spent their lives in 
addressing envelopes at something less than 
the market price, and footsore secretaries 
who walked the slums to verify the abuses 
which their chiefs were to denounce in the 
newspapers. She had never had a high 
opinion of philanthropy, but it was consid- 


174 AT THE RELTON ARMS. 

erably lowered by her new experiences of 
it. She humbly offered to sing a ballad at 
a people’s concert in the East End ; but her 
offer was politely refused on the ground 
that several of the leading singers of the 
day had offered their services free for the 
same concert ; and she was asked if she 
would dance the skirt dance instead, at a 
titled lady’s ^ At Home ’ for another chari- 
table object. Sundry hard-working clergy 
came to hear of her estimable intentions, 
and wrote to ask her for subscriptions and 
to offer her district-visiting in their parishes ; 
but as it was the aesthetic side of philan- 
thropy alone that had attracted her, she 
declined their offers promptly and with a 
shudder. 

Once, in an impetuous mood, she joined 
a Ladies’ League for the supply of soup and 
bread to a select company of the deserving 
poor in a West End parish. There were 
more ladies altogether than there were 
afterwards recipients of their charity ; and 
they all met weekly in one another’s 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 


175 


houses to organize their system of relief 
during the cold weather. The cold weather 
came along before the preliminaries were 
arranged. There were no gentlemen at 
these meetings until after the business had 
been transacted, when afternoon tea was 
brought in, and a recherche reception fol- 
lowed. But the frost continued, and there 
seemed no prospect of the sufferers ever re- 
ceiving their bread and their soup. Just be- 
fore Christmas, it came to Jady Joan’s turn 
to hold the meeting in her house. It took 
place in a dingy old library that day, and 
there was no reception afterwards, and no 
afternoon tea. Lady Joan herself moved 
three resolutions at the opening of the sit- 
ting : the first was that there should be no 
more meetings ; the second, that all future 
business should be transacted by a com- 
mittee of gentlemen only ; and the third, 
that the charity, if given at all, should be 
administered to all sufferers, irrespective of 
character. All three motions were thrown 
out indignantly, and their proposer sent in 
her resignation the next day. 


176 AT THE RELTON ARMS. 

^^Philanthropy is the selfish pastime of the 
great, and I was an owl to meddle with 
it,” she said gloomily to Sir Marcus, who 
happened to be lunching with her one day 
about that time. Sir Marcus always came 
to see her whenever he came to town, and 
told her of his last letter to the papers, or 
his last effort to improve the condition of 
the working-man ; — she had loved his 
boy, and she al ways listened without laugh- 
ing at him ; these were the two ideas he 
vaguely connected with her in his mind. 
Another man, a less easily impressed one, 
might have been killed by the suddenness 
of Jack’s death ; but Sir Marcus, although 
his infatuation for his scapegrace son had 
been the deepest attachment he had ever 
felt for any one, had been really more af- 
fected by the tragedy of his end than by 
his actual death ; and so it came about that 
he was considerably aged by the shock, and 
yet was able to return again to his books 
and his hobbies. 

Philanthropy in town is all a mistake, 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 177 

my dear,” he answered her, hotly ; it 
nothing but a trumped-up job among the 
swells, that ’s what it is, of course. In my 
time, you know, before there were such a 
lot of them in the nursery, and when I 
was pitching my thousands right and left, 
— that was philanthropy if you like ! But 
now philanthropists are merely commercial 
contractors, — you mark my words, my dear, 
commercial contractors running the whole 
concern for profit ; and what good can come 
out of that, eh ? Ah, you must come down 
into the country for morals ; Londoners are 
the biggest thieves in existence.” 

Not so bad as that. Sir Marcus,” she 
remonstrated ; I don’t think philanthro- 
pists are commercial contractors exactly, 
at least not the ones I Ve met. They are 
mostly egoists and mostly unbusinesslike, 
but not thieves, no.” 

Is n’t that what I said?” said Sir 
Marcus, testily. It was not; but she did 
not wish to risk her reputation with him, 
and she listened patiently while he poured 
12 


178 AT THE KELTON ARMS. 

out his own schemes for the education of 
the country laborer, or rather of the Mur- 
ville laborer, until she repeated her first 
remark to herself with a yawn, and wrote 
round to Digby, after Sir Marcus had left, 
to come and tell her what to do next. 

She had seen a good deal of Digby 
lately; he knew all about her ambitious 
schemes and her failure to carry them out, 
and he was eager to sympathize with her 
whenever she would allow him ; while she 
accepted his sympathy as one who did not 
want it particularly, but liked to command 
it at will. And during the growth of his 
baby’s teeth, which rendered both conver- 
sation and work difficult in the flat in 
Victoria Street, the musician often found 
his way to Lady Joan’s house in Pont Street 
in the hours that he would otherwise have 
spent in writing music. It is true that he 
honestly tried for some time to write classi- 
cal lullabies to his daughter in the pantry, 
that being the corner in the flat furthest 
removed from the nursery, while his wife 


AT THE KELTON ARMS. 


179 


sang her to sleep in the cradle to the homely 
ditty of Hush-a-by-baby/’ and that he al- 
ways nursed her when he was asked, and 
did not swear when he made her cry and 
was blamed for his clumsiness but after a 
time he made no objection when his wife 
sent him round to take her excuses and to 
dine alone with Lady Joan, until it became 
no uncommon thing for him to spend his 
evenings with her, while Norah stayed at 
home and nursed the baby. They were 
all three totally regardless of public opin- 
ion in the matter, though it might well 
have come to their ears that Norah was 
being very generally pitied by the musi- 
cian’s lady friends, not for her loneliness, 
but for her neglect of the treasure she 
seemed so unconscious of possessing, and 
that the musician was allowed to go scath- 
less as he always was, and that Lady Joan 
was hated without exception. But the musi- 
cian, who had done what he liked since 
his infancy, meant to go on doing it now 
in defiance of all the scandals that were 


180 AT THE RELTOH ARMS. 

about ; and Lady Joan, for her part, al- 
ways went out of her way to add to them 
if she could; while Norah only ignored 
them altogether, and smiled to herself, and 
so deceived every one who knew her, in- 
cluding her husband. 

Yes ? she said to Mrs. Reginald Routh, 
when that lady remarked one day, during 
a short call, that Mr. Digby always seemed 
to be in Pont Street, it is very unfortu- 
nate he should miss you so often ; but Joan 
has wanted him a good deal lately, and I 
have been only too glad, when baby has 
been fretful, to send him round to see her. 
There is such a platonic friendship between 
them, you know.” 

Platonic, do you call it, Mrs. Digby ? ” 
said her visitor, with her accustomed smile. 

Do you know, my dear Mrs. Digby, that 
from what I know of Plato, — and I at- 
tended all Mr. Digby’s lectures on Plato 
and Schopenhauer, and their relation to 
music and Socialism, which was before you 
knew him, of course, — I don’t fancy he 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 181 

would have countenanced such goings on 
in his ideal Republic ? Of course you know 
best, and I should not dream of interfering 
between a wife and a husband ; but I should 
certainly say myself, if I were asked, that 
that young woman’s behavior in Pont Street 
is more fit for the Old Testament than for 
Plato. Perhaps you have not read any 
Plato, though ? ” 

No ; only the Old Testament ; and that 
I was obliged to do for myself, you see, 
because there were no lectures upon it,” 
rejoined Norah, gravely ; and she bore the 
swift scrutiny of Mrs. Reginald Routh with- 
out flinching. Mrs. Reginald changed the 
subject ; it was the only thing left her to 
do, and she did it well. 

Of course I should not speak so strongly, 
dear Mrs. Digby, if I had not known your 
husband so well and so intimately before 
he met you at all. And perhaps if I had 
had your good fortune,” here she glanced 
in a telling manner at the baby on Norah’s 
knee, ^^and could have had a small soul 


182 


AT THE KELTON ARMS. 


to develop, I, too, should have become a 
womanly woman, with no desire for intel- 
lectual improvement. Ah, Mrs. Digby, you 
have in your child what we childless wives 
have failed to find in our search after wis- 
dom. I frankly own that you are to be 
envied.” 

And she had her revenge, for Norah 
believed her. 

Digby came in when she had gone. 

Joan has sent round for me to help her 
out of a difficulty. Any message, childie ? 
I shall be back to dinner. And have you 
seen my warm gloves ? ” 

I mended them and put them in your 
drawer, dear. That ’s just like a man to 
be surprised at finding them in the right 
place ! Oh, I wish you would write about 
the bath-room pipe — ” 

Damn,” said Digby, audibly. 

Don’t, Digby. It really is important, 
because the wall is getting damp, and — ” 
That does n’t matter, does it ? I ’ve 
moved the piano.” 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 183 

^^But it is coming through into the 
nursery, Digby.’’ 

“ Oh, all right. I ’ll do it when I come 
in.” 

Mrs. Eeginald has been here.” 

I know ; that ’s why I have n’t. What 
did she say ? ” 

She seemed to think that you and Joan 
were enacting an Old Testament episode 
without the sanction of inspiration.” 

What awful cheek ! ” 

Oh, she only meant to be friendly, I 
think. She seemed to admire baby.” 

^‘Deuced clever woman, Mrs. Reginald. 
I ’ll write about the pipe when I come in.” 

He was with Lady Joan for about two 
hours, and it was quite dark when he left 
her house. They had reached that stage 
in their intercourse when conversation is 
rather difficult, but companionship is a 
matter of course. They did not discuss the 
arts now, nor the ethics of Socialism, nor 
the position of woman. None of these 
things seemed to matter half so much to 


184 AT THE EELTON ARMS. 

them as his prospects of getting fresh pupils, 
or her choice of a dining-room paper. And 
sometimes they did not speak at all, though 
their' silence was never an embarrassed one. 
This afternoon there had been more than 
usual to talk about, for she had resolved to 
give up her visions of philanthropy and was 
thinking of going abroad, and he had been 
trying to dissuade her, purely in his char- 
acter of adviser, without letting her see 
that he hoped she would remain in London. 
He was beginning to realize how much he 
liked coming to see her, and how great a 
relief it was to escape from the people who 
had claims upon him, and for whose bath- 
room pipes he was legally responsible, to 
some one who had no claim upon him, and 
whose bath-room pipes were in consequence 
so much pleasanter to superintend. And 
he walked down the doorsteps slowly, with 
a feeling that he had not persuaded her to 
remain, and that he was a fool not to have 
used the only methods of persuasion that 
he would like to have used, and that might 


AT THE EELTON ARMS. 


185 


have gained his point. There was a weary 
vista before him of endless letters to the 
plumber, of endless commonplace conver- 
sations with his wife, of endless unfulfilled 
ambitions, everything that chokes the 
energy of the artistic enthusiast who has 
been married long enough to lose his first 
illusions, and not long enough to learn to 
do without them. He was in the mood to 
be exasperated by a triviality, and he swore 
beneath his breath when a man with a 
beard stumbled against him in the portico. 

Digby ! ” shouted the man with the 
beard, in a voice that made the passers-by 
stop and look. 

The musician recoiled, and stammered 
something. He said afterwards that the 
fateful truth flashed upon him in a second 
of time, but in reality he stood there for 
some moments while the existence of the 
man before him slowly worked its way to 
his brain. And with the realization of 
Jack’s existence came the realization of 
something he had been trying for six 


186 


AT THE HELTON ARMS. 


months to hide from himself. Jack’s re- 
turn from the dead meant — good heavens ! 
what did it not mean to him now ? 

And to Joan also ? 

“You — you must not go into her sud- 
denly like this; it might kill her, the 
shock, don’t you know,” he found himself 
saying, in a kind of dream, when the first 
hurried and incoherent words of greeting 
had passed between them. Joan was all 
he was thinking of just then, Joan and the 
last six months of uninterrupted friendship. 
Yet Digby was not a bad man, nor a mali- 
cious one exactly ; but his old affection for 
his brother, which had always depended 
more on habit than on natural affinity, had 
been rudely broken by his supposed death, 
and it was not easy to revive it again now, 
nor was it made easier by a concurrence of 
circumstances which seemed to demand that 
he should rather have stayed away alto- 
gether. Why had Jack chosen this mo- 
ment to come back? A few years back the 
musician would have found an occasion for 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 187 

moralizing in the strange conflict of feelings 
within him. 

''I — I feel quite queer myself/' he said, 
making an effort to grasp his brother’s 
hand more warmly ; why on earth did n’t 

you let us know that the wrong man 

that the other man was killed? You 
always did imagine that we knew all about 
you without your troubling to write to us, 
Jack. Never was so surprised in my life, 
— delighted, I should say. But what does 
it all mean ? ” 

“Eh, what? Why, don’t you see, I 
thought it was all bally rot to write and 
explain that they had cabled my name 
instead of Jack Kackstraw’s, because I 
meant to come over that next mail. And 
then, when I got another berth offered me 
with an elegant screw, I reckoned I ’d take 
it and go on being dead for a space, rather 
a scheme, don’t you twig ? And besides, I 
thought if I lay low till next fall Joan 
might find out she cared for me a bit more 
than she calculated, eh ? Has n’t it been 


188 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 


hard work, though, just sitting tight and 
not hearing from her ! Now, fire yourself, 
Digby, and let me freeze on to that bell.” 

‘‘But look here, old man,” urged the 
musician, desperately, “let me go in first 
and explain. You go round to Norah and 
wait till I come for you. These — these 
shocks are too much for women ; they can’t 
always stand them ; women can’t, you 
know. Surely you must see the folly of 
frightening her — ” 

“You old woman, Digby; what by all 
that ’s holy are you playing at ? Joan ’s 
not that sort ; besides, if you ’d been away 
three years, old chap, I guess you ’d run the 
risk of seeing a girl turn pale for you. Eh ? 
So clear out.” 

He twisted the musician round with one 
touch of his hand, and flew up the steps. 
But quick as he was, Digby was quicker 
still, and sprang before him at the top of 
the steps, panting, and hardly knowing 
what he did. Jack seized him by the arm 
in slowly dawning amazement. 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 


189 


Ton my word, if Joan 's half as fright- 
ened as you look now, I shall begin to 
believe it is a shock to meet some one 
who ’s supposed to have kicked. You want 
a drink, old man, and if you don’t go and 
get it now I — ” 

I know, I ’m going, I am really, Jack. 
It’s purely for your own good I am speak- 
ing ; why should it matter to me ? But 
you’re such an unsuspecting chap, and I 
don’t want to see you made a fool of ; and 
look here. Jack, I ’rn a brute to suggest it, 
I know, but women are fickle, as all the 
world knows, and she thought you were 
dead, and after all no one could blame her 
if — don’t you see ? ” 

There was a sudden pause then, and a 
loosening of the strong grip on his arm, 
and the musician began to feel something 
of the brute he had been so ready to avow 
himself. 

Of course, I ’m not insinuating that 
there ’s some one else, I don’t know his 
name if there is ; but knowing their nature 


190 


A.T THE RELTON ARMS. 


as I do, I think it ’s wiser not to — not to 
give them a clean bill of constancy always 
— eh ? At all events, how would it be for 
me to meet you at the flat when I Ve 
sounded the ground a bit with Joan ? It 
would only make a delay of half-an-hour or 
so, and — my dear fellow ! '' 

Jack had caught him by the coat in a 
sudden paroxysm of nervous fury, and 
Digby found himself half throttled and 
pinned against the stone wall of the por- 
tico, while a loud peal from the door-bell 
resounded through the house. 

You brute — you! Why do you want 
to keep me from her ? If you were any one 
else standing between her and me I w^ould 
wipe the floor with you. There — clear 
out, can’t you ? Oh, hang it, I Ve been 
half crazed to meet her all day, and now — 
that devilish suggestion of yours — ah 1 
can’t you go, you ? ” 

Digby shrank back as he felt himself 
free. There were steps coming along the 
hall inside, and he curbed himself to speak 
carelessly as he turned away as if to leave. 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 191 

Poor chap, 1 forgive you when I think 
of the hash you are going to make of it. 
You were n’t born to deal with wily women, 
and when to-morrow comes, ah ! — ” 

After all, when the man opened the door, 
it was Digby who entered the house. A 
man with a short beard was walking rap- 
idly down the street. 

What is it ? Anything wrong ? ” asked 
Lady Joan, quickly. 

‘‘ No, no, nothing. Only 1 feel as though 
I had been persuading you against your 
will and for my own selfish reasons, and I 
Came back to say so. There is nothing to 
keep you in England — nothing. Why not 
go abroad — to-morrow ? ” 

Oh. Is that all ? How stupid of you 
to come back and look tragic just for that. 
And as if 1 should not go without waiting 
for your permission. Monsieur! Why, I 
have just been making out a route. Come 
and look.” 

He followed her finger mechanically with 
his eyes as she traced it over the map, and 


192 AT THE KELTON ARMS. 

he made a great effort to compose himself. 
She exhausted France and Germany before 
she noticed his silence, and then she pushed 
away the Baedeker suddenly, and leaned 
back to try and see his face. He was 
standing a little behind her. 

I wish you ’d say something, Higby. 
You look as if you ’d seen a ghost.’^ 

I have,” he answered quietly, without 
taking his eyes from the top of her head. 

Whose was it ? ” she asked, half puz- 
zled, half amused. 

My brother Jack’s. He is in London.” 

He did not see that the color fled from 
her face, nor that she gasped a little as 
though she had a difficulty in breathing. 
What he saw was that she slowly turned 
round on her chair and looked to him 
beseechingly. 

Is — it — true ? she asked in a hushed 
tone. The dull anguish of it lent a fierce- 
ness to his purpose. 

have spoken to him. Would to God 
it were not ! ” 


AT THE EELTON ARMS. 193 

It did not seem strange to her that he 
should say so, nor that he did not come 
and stroke her hair as he so often did when 
she fancied herself in trouble. She crossed 
her arms on the top of the chair, and laid 
her cheek on them. 

I 've always known that he must come 
back. Jack could never be dead,’’ she 
murmured in a hopeless tone of voice ; he 
is overflowing with life, crude, arrogant 
life. Why did T believe them when they 
said he was dead ? ” 

Perhaps you wished to believe it,” said 
the musician. 

When he found the silence that followed 
no longer endurable, he moved a little 
nearer to her, where he could see the fierce 
movement of her shoulders and the curls 
on the back of her neck. 

Shall we resume our conversation ? ” 
he said, and touched the Baedeker. 

How can we ? I must wait a little, see 
Jack, no, no, not see him, but — but write to 
him — if it is possible he never had my 

13 


194 AT THE RELTON ARMS. 

other letter? Why has he come back to 
torment me just when I was beginning to 
feel happy ? And — oh, drop that book, 
can’t you? Don’t you understand that I 
cannot go abroad now ? ” 

Why not ? ” 

“ Because, oh, how dense you are ! Even 
if I can get away from Jack, and I feel as 
if I never should be free again, but even 
supposing I can break his heart and leave 
him, how can I go away and be by myself in- 
terminably ? You don’t know me if you 
think that would do m'e any good.” 

don’t think so. I did not suggest 
your going alone. You don’t know me if 
— you think I could let you go.” 

She raised herself slowly on to her elbows 
and covered her eyes with her hands. He 
was looking down at the scarlet cover of 
the Baedeker. 

What do you mean ? ” 

What I have said. You don’t want to 
see Jack. I will take you away from him. 
Will you come ? ” 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 195 

She did not speak, and a shiver passed 
swiftly down her frame. 

He came nearer to her. 

believe you like him still,” he said, 
with a curious smile. 

She raised her head, and clenched her 
fists, and laughed harshly. She, too, looked 
at the scarlet cover of the Baedeker. 

I should hate him — if he were worth 
it. But I have never loved him ” 

Then answer my question. Will you 
come ? ” 

She moistened her lips and tried to speak 
clearly. 

We were so happy as it was. Can’t it 
go on?” 

^^No, it cannot go' on. If you were a 
man you would not ask that. Will you 
comer 

She closed her eyes, and tried not to hear 
the singing in her ears, and thought he 
would come and touch her. But he did 
not move at all. 

You are frightened, are you not ? ” he 
said. 


196 AT THE KETTON ARMS. 

you ? No, I don’t think I am fright- 
ened of you.” 

He came so near then that she felt his 
warm breath on her neck. 

Not of me, oh, no. But, all the same, 
you are frightened, or else you would not 
hesitate.” 

He turned away again, and she dropped 
her hands quickly from her eyes. 

You are not going ? ” 

Not if you wish me to stay,” he said, 
and folded his arms and waited. 

I do want you to stay — give me time 
to think, Digby — I — ” 

A cab rattled past the house outside, and 
as the sound died away, she rose slowly and 
with difficulty from her chair and looked 
at him. And he came and supported her 
on his arm, and drew his fingers up her 
throat and round her face to her forehead, 
and back again to her chin, and so forced 
her to meet his eyes. 

I will come,” she said. 


CHAPTER X. 


The Squire sat making calculations in liis 
study, as he did nearly every day of his 
life. There was nothing in his appearance 
to denote that anything unusual, least of all 
anything exceedingly pleasant, had occurred 
to him. And yet, it was only that morning 
that they had told him Jack was alive and 
was coming home the same evening. Per- 
haps it was that, like Digby, he found it 
hard to revive an affection that had ceased 
to be part of his life six months ago ; or, 
more likely still, he felt in some vague way 
or another that Jack had come back to life 
on purpose to produce some unpaid debts 
for his father to settle. Sir Marcus never 
dissimulated, and he made no attempt to 
conceal the fact that his joy in his son’s 
resurrection did not wholly compensate for 


198 AT THE RELTON ARMS. 

the trouble that was certain to be a conse- 
quence of it. 

So he sat making calculations as usual, 
though his wife felt bound to go into 
hysterics in the drawing-room, and the rest 
of the family were trying to erect a shaky 
evergreen arch in the garden, with Wel- 
come home ! ” nailed on it in evergreen let- 
ters. They were making a good deal of 
noise over it, too, and the calculations did 
not get on, in consequence. They related 
this time to rabbits, to the number imported 
yearly from abroad, and the inadequate 
number reared in the home country itself, 
and Sir Marcus was making them with the 
object of writing a letter to the county 
paper, suggesting rabbit culture as a lucra- 
tive employment for the British villager. 
According to Sir Marcus, the British vil- 
lager had an immense amount of time on 
his hands. Not that his interest in the 
duck culture was in any degree on the 
wane, but the county paper had refused to 
insert any more of his letters about the 


AT THE RELTOH ARMS. 


199 


Murville ducks and the enormous profits 
that the Murville laborer was said to realize 
from breeding them ; and so the Squire had 
been only too glad to take up the question 
of tame rabbits, which was being tenta- 
tively ventilated by a neighboring Squire 
in another village. Sir Marcus never did 
anything tentatively, however ; so he began 
by talking rabbits at every man he met in 
the village street ; and as every man he 
met, owing to his own former persuasions, 
was a ducker, that worthy generally re- 
ceived his recommendation of this new ani- 
mal with something like distrust. The 
duckers of Murville could not understand 
any article of commerce that did not lay 
eggs, and although they obediently ate the 
few samples that the Squire sent round to 
them for their Sunday dinners, yet they did 
so with much condescension, and no little 
suspicion that they were being coaxed into 
liking a new food that must be inferior 
because it was cheap. The Murville laborer 
had retained some of his independence, in 


200 AT THE RELTOH ARMS. 

spite of being the property of a Radical 
overlord. 

Tell ye what it is, George,’’ said Tom 
Clarke, the biggest ducker in the village, 
as he sat smoking one evening in the 
newly built club in the main street, I be 
altogether flustered along o’ them new 
fancies of the Squire, I be. What be rab- 
bits, hey, man ? Can ye tell me that, now ? 
Ye be oop at the Manor all day, along o’ 
the Squire hisself, so ye ought to know for 
sure.” 

The handy man shook his head dumbly, 
which was his usual form of reply, and the 
one that his hearers generally preferred ; 
and Tom Clarke continued his ruminations 
for the benefit of any of the members pre- 
sent who might be inclined to listen to him. 

Rabbits beats me altogether, I be bound 
to own. They bain’t poultry, and they 
bain’t butcher’s meat neither. What be 
they, anyhow ? The Squire be a proper 
kind gentleman for sure, but when he takes 
up with them okkard new fancies what no 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 201 

one can’t explain, it be proper hard to 
know how to treat ’un. Why, George man, 
when the parson was readin’ of the Litany, 
Sunday past, and come to the ^ kindly 
fruits of the earth,’ I thinks to myself, 
‘ that ’s rabbits, that is,’ and I shuts my mouth 
tight, I does ! And me what ’s never missed 
sayin’ and singin’ all the prayer-book al- 
lows ’un to do, this forty year that I ’ve sat 
in the choir up agin poor Jack Priest’s tab- 
let. ’T ain’t as though I be an unreligious 
body what sings an’ don’t pray, as I’ve 
known some do ; but there ’s never a Amen 
that I don’t take part in, and there bain’t 
a trap in the service as can catch me now, 
allays allowin’ for the reply to the tenth 
commandment what were put in by the 
devil or the chapel people, and caught on 
by the parsons accidental, so to speak. So 
you see how a man be upset all along o’ 
them beasts, if ye can call a thing a beast 
what eats like string.” 

Mrs. Tom Clarke, in spite of the cookery 
lectures that had been given in the Club on 


202 


AT THE EELTON ARMS. 


Wednesday evenings^ by an expert from 
London, who had evolved strange dishes 
from herring heads and mutton bones with 
the aid of a patent portable stove, still pre- 
ferred to cook her husband’s food in her 
own way, and this generally consisted in 
putting it into a saucepan from which the 
duck’s food had just been extracted, — a 
process which had the effect of making 
everything taste alike ; so it was certainly 
probable that the Squire s rabbit had not 
had a fair chance in that cottage, at all 
events. 

But in spite of the opposition he was re- 
ceiving from his most faithful adherents. Sir 
Marcus still sat patiently, and made his cal- 
culations for his new letter to the papers. 
He had already written to two or three 
members of Parliament for satistics, and 
had received replies from the House of 
Commons which he folded on his writing- 
table with the address uppermost, and in 
which they mostly referred him to Whit- 
aker ; and he had caused a slight disruption 


AT THE HELTON ARMS. 203 

at the luncheon table, only that day, by 
wanting to know the good of the expensive 
education he had given his children if it 
turned them out ignorant of rabbits. The 
children were wishing just then that their 
father’s new hobby had not happened to 
possess him in the Christmas holidays, and 
Lady Raleigh had taken the precaution of 
telling her cook to jug the hare and make 
it as unlike a rabbit as possible, so that 
dinner might pass off more peaceably than 
luncheon had done. 

I must have Joan down ; she would sym- 
pathize,” murmured Sir Marcus, laying his 
pen down, and reading the first sentences 
he had written of his letter. Splendid 
woman, Joan, never laughs at my little 
ideas, and takes such an interest in them. 
Shows what intelligence can do for a 
girl. She ’d have made Jack realize the 
responsibilities of existence, she would. 
Devil take my head, why is it swimming 
so this afternoon ? ” 

The letter did not get on very fast, there 


204 AT THE RELTON ARMS. 

was too much similarity between its senti- 
ments and those he had so often expressed 
before ; it looked rather as though he were 
adapting an old letter by scratching out 
duck and substituting ; rabbit/' for he 
found himself writing that the feathers 
and eggs alone of one rabbit more than 
repaid the cost of rearing it. 

“ Digby used to come down and see me 
oftener than he does now/' said Sir Marcus, 
laying down his pen again and passing his 
hand across his brow. I don’t like his 
being away so long, and the dear little boy 
too ; why don’t they come and see me ? 
Got a wife ? Oh, to be sure, yes ; my 
memory don’t seem so strong as it was, 
somehow : to be sure, a wife, yes. Nice 
little thing, very; wonder if she would 
know how many we get yearly from Hol- 
land ? My hand gets more tired than it 
used, though it would n’t do to say so ; 
people are so ready to talk about an old 
man breaking up before he’s out of the 
sixties. Why, I walked up from the post- 


at the relton arms. 205 

office in eight minutes and a half this morn- 
ing ; I can beat the youngsters now, eh ? 
I wish Joan would come and catch hold of 
this accursed letter, it keeps drifting so far 
away. I always wonder what made her 
take Digby; funny fellow, Digby. What 
am I saying ? It ’s Jack who is her hus- 
band, is n’t it ? I \e been writing too 
much to-day’, that ’s what it is. I ’m only a 
little queer, but — I wish Joan would come 
and finish my letter for me. Why won’t 
Digby bring her down now ? Let ’s get 
hold of the whiskey ; that ’s what I want to 
set me straight, of course. What nonsense 
they are talking ; men don’t fall to pieces 
when they are sixty-four. I can walk with 
the best of them, eh, Joan, my dear?” 

There were three people destined for 
Murville Manor in the 6.45 from Euston 
that evening. Two of them were in sepa- 
rate third-class smoking carriages at the 
end of the train ; the other sat in a first- 
class compartment. They were Digby, and 
Jack, and Lady Joan, all summoned by the 


206 AT THE KELTON ARMS. 

same telegram, and all obeying the sum- 
mons unknown to each other, and with the 
greatest speed possible. The two brothers, 
singularly enough, each spent the greater 
part of the two hours’ journey in reading 
and re-reading a letter, which was written, 
in both cases, in a thick, rather illegible 
handwriting. The musician, as he took 
his from the already opened envelope, gave 
a half-conscious look round the carriage 
before he read it. It dated from the day 
before, and had no heading to it : — 

‘‘ I think on consideration that the new form 
of diversion you proposed to me the other night 
would not work so well as we thought. So I am 
not going to entertain it any longer. You will 
probably blame me for my vacillation ; but then, 
you should not have established a precedent for 
vacillation in the ‘ Relton Arms,’ four years 
ago. After all, there is nothing Jeft but the 
book; and I am going to be away, and alone, 
until I have written it. Don’t be alarmed. I am 
not goiiig to soak it with my own experiences. 

“ Joan.” 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 


207 


His younger brother, in the other car- 
riage, did not look at any one when he 
took his letter from his breast-pocket and 
unfolded it. It was very limp, and looked 
as though it had been unfolded many times 
before. It was dated two days earlier : — 

“ My dear Boy, — I am a cad, and I hate 
myself for what I have done to you. It is 
quite the meanest thing I have done in my life. 
Please believe that I did not authorize Digby to 
come and tell you for me, last night ; he wanted 
to spare me the unpleasantness, I suppose, of 
confessing to you that I was a brute. But I 
am a brute, all the same ; I should only be a 
worse one if I were to marry you now. I 
have n’t the least right to expect you to grant 
me a favor, but I shall be glad if you will take 
this as final. 

“Joan Belton.” 

The station for Murville village was two 
miles away from the Manor House, or from 
any human habitation of importance ; and 
as the train slowly steamed away from it 
to-night, the three passengers whom it had 


208 AT THE RELTON ARMS. 

brought from town, unknown to each other, 
were the only three whom it had deposited 
on the platform. They found themselves 
standing together near the exit, and there 
was an awkward moment of recognition 
while they fumbled with cold fingers for 
their tickets. Digby had apparently lost 
his altogether ; Lady Joan had hers ready, 
and passed out swiftly ; and Jack promptly 
gave up the wrong half of his and passed 
out after her, in spite of the station-master’s 
expostulations. 

Stupid of George to be late,” observed 
Jack in the road outside. He was clearing 
his throat a good deal, and looking up the 
road with a great show of concern. 

It was odd that we should all catch the 
same train,” she said, stamping her feet, 
and coughing with unnecessary violence ; I 
suppose you have not been down before ? ” 

No ; they only knew of my arrival in 
time to cable to me that my father was 
dying,” he said, with a queer mixture of 
humor and bitterness ; life is very rum 
sometimes, isn’t it?” 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 209 

Always,” she said fervently, and shiv- 
ered among her furs. They both looked 
up the road then, and prayed for the ad- 
vent of George and the cart. Digby’s irri- 
tated tones could be heard from within, 
concerning his missing ticket. 

I say, won’t you let fly for the fire in 
the booking-office till George comes ? I 
reckon you’re cold some,” began Jack 
again, awkwardly. 

Oh, no, please don’t trouble about me,” 
she replied politely, as though she had just 
been introduced to him for the first time. 

Digby came out and joined them. 

He ’s always late,” he began, in a high- 
pitched tone, also looking up the road with 
a great show of interest. 

He is a countryman, you see,” said Lady 
Joan, with gravity. 

And the mother has been at him for 
six years,” added Jack. 

They discussed the handy man, without 
a suspicion of a smile, for some minutes 
longer, and they continued to look up the 

14 


210 AT THE RELTON ARMS. 

road, and back at the clock in the station, 
and anywhere except at each other, until 
the welcome sound of wheels at last drew 
near, when they all flung themselves upon 
the handy man, without mercy, and robbed 
him of his few wits at once. 

How is your master, George ? 

Yes, how is Sir Marcus, George ? 
added Joan, anxiously. 

Aye, how be the Squire, for sure, poor 
gentleman?” chimed in the solitary porter 
from behind. 

‘^And what on earth possessed you to 
bring the luggage cart, George ? ” added 
Digby, wrathfully. 

The handy man slowly dismounted from 
his seat, and made a desperate eflort to say 
what was required of -him. 

He be proper bad, he be ; leastways so 
Ihe cook told me when I come by the larder 
window with the sprouts, or I should say 
the celery for dinner it was, an’ Lady 
Raleigh, she would have it as it were too 
slippy to bring the dogcart, notwithstandin’ 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 211 

as it bain’t the cart what falls down, but 
the animal for sure, an’ he won’t last till 
mornin’, poor gentleman, though the best 
London doctor come down by the five-forty 
o’ purpose to have a last look of him, what 
went far towards killin’ of ’im off in my 
thinkin’. An’ the luggage is to be sent on 
afterwards, if ye please, Mr. Jack ; an’ Tom 
Clarke he says as how he means to put off* 
his visit to his sister, what ’s married into 
the grocery business at Reading, till he be 
sure how things means to turn out, cos he 
says he bain’t a-goin’ of to miss a choreal 
funeral, what has n’t been for nigh upon 
thirty — ” 

Go to the horse’s head, George,” said 
Digby, sternly, and he turned to hand Lady 
Joan into the cart ; it is not very comfor- 
table, I am afraid, but Jack and I will walk 
on, which will give you more room.” 

Lady Joan drew back and hesitated a little. 

You had better come too, had n’t you ? ” 
she said; ‘Gt would be much quicker, 
and — ” 


212 AT THE RELTON ARMS. 

^^Aje, sir, there be room and to spare/^ 
put in the porter, encouragingly ; you Ve 
only got to put your arms round one an- 
other all tidy an’ comfortable like, an’ 
there ain’t no fear o’ tumbling out. Bless 
ye, sir, there be as many as six together in 
a cart like this on market days, all as safe 
and as pleasant as can be.” 

An’ there bain’t no time to lose, Mr. 
Digby,” added George, from the horse’s 
head ; leastways, the end might come 
while we be gossipin’ here, and the Lord 
grant him a peaceful — ” 

“ Come and take the reins, George,” in- 
terrupted Lady Joan, suddenly mounting 
the cart without any assistance at all, and 
get in quickly, you two ; there ’s loads of 
room, of course.” 

They began by sitting stiffly on the edge 
of the seat, as far away from each other as 
possible ; but the first plunge forward of the 
restive pony nearly tipped up the seat and 
sent them all backwards, and a parting 
admonition from the friendly porter fol- 
lowed them up the road. 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 


213 


Hold on tight to the lady, sirs ; that be 
the only way of doin' it," he bawled at the 
top of his voice ; and although it was an 
attitude that none of the three would have 
chosen at that moment, they were compelled 
by common prudence to follow his advice ; 
and they completed the drive in silence, 
sitting on the narrow seat of the little 
rickety cart, with their arms locked to- 
gether, and their hands unavoidably clasped. 

The Squire’s letter to the papers was 
never finished, and nobody ever told him 
how many rabbits were imported annually 
from Holland. It was a question he re- 
peatedly asked of those around him on the 
last night of his life, though he varied it, 
when Joan and his two sons arrived, by 
wanting to know when Jack was going to 
be married. 

Soon, quite soon," Lady Joan whispered 
to him reassuringly, and she put her hand 
in Jack’s to confirm the delusion. Jack 
knew it was a delusion, and did not press 


214 AT THE RELTON ARMS. 

it ; he had come to understand her at 
last. 

They stood together in the library, a 
week after the Squire’s death, on the eve 
of her departure for Relton. 

I was a fool ever to think you could 
care for me,” he said sadly The circum- 
stances of the week they had spent to- 
gether, since their meeting at the station, 
had completely dissipated their first feel- 
ings of awkardness. They were almost on 
the dull footing of a brother and sister, who 
have very little in common, but who have 
learnt the trick of companionship. 

“ I let you think I did. It was my fault, 
as I told you before. Had n’t we better 
let it drop ? ” she said brusquely. Oh, 
heavens ! how old I am beginning to look,” 
she added, as she caught a glimpse of her- 
self in the glass over the mantelshelf. 

It is only because you are tired,” he 
said, looking at her. 

She laughed. 

At least you are truthful,” she said, 


AT THE RELTON A^MS. 


215 


carelessly ; tell me you are not wild with 
me, Jack. I have treated you abominably, 
have n’t I ? If only you were not so pro- 
vokingly good-tempered about it, I should 
feel much better, I think. I always did hate 
whipping a dog that did n’t howl. Ah, you 
don’t understand a bit ! I believe I am 
rotten all through, and that is why I have 
dished my life so effectually. And I ’m not 
a bit sorry, and I mean to have a good time 
still. Hey-day ! But tell me you ’re not 
wild. Jack.”. 

Oh, that ’s all straight now. And it ’s 
much worse for you, don’t you know,” he 
said, stumbling on the truth in his slow 
way ; I shall do all right ; don’t you fret 
yourself about me. I ought to have known 
I should n’t do for you. Digby will take 
you to the station, eh ? ” 

I am going alone,” she answered ab- 
ruptly, and went out into the porch, where 
most of the family had come to see her 
off. Owing to some mismanagement on 
the part of the handy man, who, having 


216 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 


been the most important man in the village 
since the Squire’s death and funeral, had 
completely neglected his usual work ever 
since, the pony needed shoeing on this 
particular afternoon, and Lady Joan could 
not be driven to the station in consequence. 
She persisted in her determination to walk 
alone, and Digby remained in awkward 
silence while his escort was being freely 
pressed upon her by his unconscious rela- 
tions. Poor Lady Raleigh, more inconse- 
quent than ever in the midst of her 
grief, kissed her convulsively, and poured 
out a confused medley of entreaties into 
her ear. 

^^You won’t take anything to heart, 
dear, that Jack has said to you? He 
does n’t mean anything he says, you know, 
so you must believe him when he says he 
loves you as much as ever. He tells me it 
is all right, so I am not going to say any- 
thing about it ; but of course you ’ll look on 
this as your home until he marries you, 
won’t you, dear ? And I assure you Jack 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 217 

cannot bear to be away from you a single 
hour, but he does like to stay in his home 
best, so you won’t think anything of his 
not walking to the station with you. Of 
course Digby is only too pleased to go with 
you, and all the fields about here are 
crowded with dangerous bulls, and if you 
are not quick you will lose the train, and 
they never keep it for you at these country 
stations, you know. So you must have 
Digby, of course. And you are sure you 
understand about dear Jack ? You must n’t 
listen to him, that ’s all ; he says he is so 
fond of you still, dear boy.’' 

Do have Digby, Joan ; he does n’t leave 
till to-morrow, and he only hangs about 
the place doing nothing, and it will take 
him out for an hour.” This from Helen. 

I am sorry to disappoint everybody,” 
said Lady Joan, in her clearest, most com- 
posed tones ; but if I did lose the train, 
Digby would not be of the least use to me 
in producing another one ; and I ’m afraid 
I am not nearly unselfish enough to burden 


218 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 


myself with his company for the good of 
the community ; so good-bye, sir ; ” and she 
gave him a straight look out of her eyes as 
she held out her hand. It was the first 
time she had spoken directly to him since 
they had parted that night in Pont Street, 
and he avoided her eyes. 

‘‘ Good-bye. They seem very anxious to 
burden you with my presence, don’t they?” 
he said, with a forced laugh ; all luck to 
the book.” 

Thanks. I will send it to you in 
instalments for criticism.” 

He was the last to remain in the porch, 
watching her across the fields ; and there 
was not a criminal in the kingdom with 
whom he would not gladly have changed 
places at that moment. 

I shall go up to-night, I think, and sur- 
prise Norah,” he muttered presently. There 
was a dull consolation in the idea of meet- 
ing the woman who had acquired the habit 
of being glad to see him ; and he felt a little 
better when he packed his bag upstairs. 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 


219 


The baby was in bed when he walked 
into the flat, and Norah was having her 
solitary meal in the dining-room. 

Why are you here to-night ? ” she 
asked him, as he held her to him more 
closely than usual. There was a gleam in 
the eyes he had almost despised lately for 
not being more observant, but he did not 
notice it as he kissed her softly. ^^So 
Joan went away to-day, did she ? ” she 
added. 

“ Joan ? Did she write to you ? ’’ he 
asked quickly. 

Oh, no. But I knew,’^ and she nodded 
at him. 

How did you know, wise woman ? ” he 
said playfully. 

Because you have come home, of 
course,” she replied, and laughed outright. 
He laughed too; but there was not a 
pleasant ring in his merriment and it was 
short-lived. 

What has come over you, childie ? ” he 
said, beginning to feel vaguely alarmed. 


220 AT THE KELTON ARMS. 

She had disengaged herself from his 
arms, and was walking away to the window. 

Oh, nothing. Only it is a pity you 
leave your coats about. I should never 
have known if you had not been so care- 
less. At least, I fancy I have known all 
the winter,” she added dreamily, as if to 
herself. 

Known what ? ” he asked in a voice 
he did not seem to recognize. But he 
knew ; and he felt rather worse than wlien 
he had stood in the porch that afterno6n, 
watching Joan over the fields. What a 
hellish sport marriage is ! ” he added in a 
bitter undertone. 

She heard him, and came back to his 
side. 

Digby.” 

“Well? I don’t want you to touch me, 
if you would rather not,” he said roughly, 
and did not look at her. 

“ I want to tell you,” she went on softly. 
“I found Joan’s letter, and I read it as a 
matter of course ; I thought it was about — 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 221 

oh, never mind what. That was the day 
you went down to Murville ; and I could 
not speak to you then. It has been so 
dreadful waiting for you to come back, 
Digby. Are you not going to look at me, 
now you have come ? ” 

He turned round bewildered, and saw 
her eyes full of tears. 

Good God, Norah, do you mean you 
can know that, and — ? 

Yes, dear. I think I know more than 
you. I think I know how you have been 
feeling lately, and all the winter. But I 
did not know it was as bad as this, and 
when I read that letter — do you know 
how I felt ? I think I must tell you, Digby ; 
I have had something to bear too, you 
know. I felt first that something terrible 
had come between you and me, something 
that wanted pushing away with all my 
might ; and I could n’t do it alone, Digby, 
and you — you were not there to help me. 
And then — I only felt sorry for you. I 
have just longed for you to come back that 


222 AT THE KELTON ARMS. 

I might put my arms round you and com- 
fort you, and tell you that I knew. Digby, 
don't turn away like that." 

But — it is inconceivable — do you know 
what you are saying ? Do you know that 
if that letter had not been written, I should 
have — ? ” He paused, for he could not bring 
himself to finish the sentence. But she 
sprang away from him suddenly, and stood 
in front of him in the middle of the room, 
with her hands clasped at the back of her 
head, and a blaze of triumph in her eyes. 

No, no, not that ! " she cried ; never 
that ! I knew it could not be. If I had 
thought you capable of that, should I be 
speaking to you now like this ? Do you 
think women are such fools then ? I 
know, she knew — that you were not capa- 
ble of it, that you never meant it, that it 
was one of your queer impulses that make 
me love you so madly, and that she can 
never forgive in you. That is why she 
wrote you that letter. That is why you 
are mine now, mine, mine, mine ! " 


AT THE HELTON ARMS. 


223 


The musician fell in love more thoroughly 
that afternoon than he had ever fallen in 
love before. 

He fell in love with his own wife. 

‘^We must have Joan up to stay with 
us ; she could write nicely at the table in 
the dining-room, could n’t she ? ” said 
Norah, when they began to talk rationally 
again. The felt wonderfully fond of Joan 
this evening. 

Oh, do you think so ? I fancy she ’ll 
be all right down at Relton for the present,” 
he answered. He was feeling that he could 
do with his wife for a good long time 
now. 

It ’s just as you like, dear. And do 
you know, baby is so wonderfully good now 
she has nearly all her teeth, that I believe 
you would find the study quiet enough to 
write music in. It has been very uncom- 
fortable for you lately, hasn’t it?’ said 
she. 

Oh, it ’s been all right. And I don’t 
think I want to write music much. I say, 


224 AT THE RELTON ARMS. 

do you think baby will take to me now? ’’ 
said he. 

Then she laughed, and he demanded the 
reason of her merriment. 

I was thinking how Joan once said that 
I should never be able to understand your 
nature, and that you would be wounding 
me half-a-dozen times a day,'' she explained, 
and laughed again. 

How absurd of her," he cried, and 
roared with laughter himself ; but then 
you know, childie, Joan has always been 
possessed with the idea that we were not 
born for each other." 

Could anything be more ridiculous ? " 
said Norah ; and they broke into a fresh 
peal of laughter, without any apparent rea- 
son for it. 

A distant wail from the nursery sum- 
moned her presently, and Digby was left 
alone in the dining-room. He smoked two 
cigarettes in silence, with a complacent 
smile, and he delivered himself of his favor- 
ite exclamation as he rolled up a third. 


AT THE RELTON ARMS. 225 

Good heavens ! ” he said out loud ; if 
it were not for habit what chance would 
there be for marriage ? Next time I see 
Joan, I’ll — ’’ 

But there he stopped. 


THE END. 


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